Sleeping may seem like a luxury to you now that you are pregnant.

Tossing and turning probably are considered your nightly exercises  since you have found out the good news. [Pregnancy Exercises]

Your abdomen is stretching now to accommodate your baby and this can make you feel really uncomfortable.

This alone can make it hard for you to sleep. Your baby is also pushing on your bladder, and frequent urination is something you have had to get used to during the night.

This frequent urination is not helping any, when it comes to getting enough sleep. There are things that you can try to help you sleep a lot better.

Do Not Drink Too Much Liquid

When you are pregnant, whatever you drink seems to not stay in your kidneys for very long. You should reduce your liquids; depending upon what time you go to bed.

Although this will not alleviate your total need to go to the bathroom at night, it will help you to shorten the time in between trips. This will give you a chance to get a little bit of extra sleep.

The time has finally come, and your gorgeous baby has arrived. You may have had a pregnancy that seemed like it would never end.

You are just relieved that your baby is healthy, and you made it through your pregnancy.

Now you are going to be dealing with what happens after the baby is born.

Your body will still go through some physical changes that you will have to adjust to.

One of these changes is your breasts filling up with milk. Although this is a natural thing you do not want to get breast engorgement.

Engorgement and You

You may feel some swelling in your breasts, after the birth of your baby. This swelling is caused by your veins expanding, and your breasts filling up with milk. You may feel engorgement after your breast excrete its colostrum.

Colostrum is a fluid that comes out of your breast, and is good for your baby. If this is your first baby, you may have more discomfort because of engorgement, than women who have had more than one child. Engorgement in your breasts can cause you to have infections.

Do you know how much weight you should gain during your pregnancy? What if you’re overweight? Should you try to lose weight?

Every woman who is pregnant needs to gain weight during her pregnancy. The amount you will need to gain will vary based on your starting weight.

The average recommended pregnancy weight gain is between 25 and 35 pounds.

Women who are underweight when they become pregnant will generally need to gain more than that.

Women who are overweight when they become pregnant will still need to gain between an additional 15 and 20 pounds to have healthy babies.

No mother-to-be should try to lose weight during pregnancy.

More important than how much you gain is how you gain the weight. You can easily pile on the pounds eating chocolate and ice cream, of course, but the best gain comes from a healthy diet. A healthy pregnancy diet includes:

• low fat milk or dairy (supplement with calcium if using unfortified soy milk),
• eggs, up to two each day
• lean protein, including chicken and fish
• dark green vegetables
• whole grains
• healthy fats and oils

A new study reports that mothers who experience complications during the beginning of their pregnancy should be watched closer throughout the duration of their pregnancy and in future pregnancies.

Data compiled from over 75 studies showed additionally that those with a history of miscarriages were at a higher risk of premature births in the future.

The study was presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual meeting that studied complications that occur commonly during the first trimester of pregnancy.

One of the risks was an increased risk of preeclampsia in those who had vaginal bleeding during the early weeks of pregnancy. Early vaginal bleeding also doubles the risk of a low birth weight.

If there is presence of blood in the womb, known as intrauterine hematoma, the risks of both low birth weight and preeclampsia increase even more.

Another symptom of low birth weight and premature delivery is early morning sickness that occurs in extremity.

Additionally, miscarriages in the past double the risk of premature birth and a past birth that was terminated regardless of the reason additionally places a baby at risk for premature birth.

Change is a natural thing when you are a woman who is pregnant. Your body will start to show signs of you being pregnant, in the early stages of pregnancy.

You may have a rosy glow that a lot of women get, when they are pregnant, and your family and friends may start to notice this.

Family and friends, who are always around you, may notice these subtle changes faster than you do. Sometimes it will be hard for you to see the changes that they see in you.

Do not worry though; physical changes that you will go through during your pregnancy will disappear after the baby is born.

Dealing with Morning Sickness

One physical change that will happen to your body, that is not very much fun, is morning sickness. Morning sickness will make you feel nauseated, and sometimes you will have to throw up.

This is a time when you may feel really ill, and cannot hold any type of food down. Severity of morning sickness will depend upon your family history, and if you are having more than one baby. They call it morning sickness, but it can actually occur at any time during the day.

Multiple babies are probably something that you had not planned. You may have a family history of multiple babies in your family, but never thought this could happen to you.

If you are someone that has had fertilization treatments, it can be expected that you might get pregnant with multiple babies.

No matter how it happened or why, it is now something that you will be experiencing for yourself.

The main thing you need to do when you are pregnant with multiples is to get good prenatal care for you and your children.

Ultrasound

If you are giving birth to multiples, it will be necessary for you go in for ultrasounds that can determine placement of your babies, and if they have anything that may be wrong with them. Your physician will be looking for such things as babies that share one sac.

This could present a great risk to your babies. When they are sharing the same sac it is easier for them to get entangled in your umbilical chord. The chance for problems with the formation of your babies doubles in a multiple pregnancy.

There is good news for women who suffer from heartburn during pregnancy, a new drug called metoclopramide has been tested according to the New England Journal of Medicine and is safe for use by pregnant women.

The study showed that women who used the drug were not at high risk for premature birth, malformations, or lower birth weight when compared to the infants of pregnant women who did not use the medicine for heartburn.

As high as 80% of all women suffer from nausea and other symptoms associated with morning sickness during the first trimester of pregnancy but most women are hesitant to take any medications to alleviate symptoms due to the fear of harming the fetus.

Metoclopramide is better known as Reglan and is approved by the FDA for the treatment of digestive problems. Currently, the drug is used in Europe and Israel as the common treatment of morning sickness, but is restricted to only severe uses of morning sickness in the United States.

The study browsed through the records of women who belonged to Clalit Health Services in Israel to study the effects of birthing complications of the women who used metoclopramide during the first trimester of pregnancy.

You have spent the last nine months anticipating the day your wonderful baby will be born.

The due date that your physician gave you is rapidly approaching, and you may be wondering how the birth will go.

Your entire family is preparing for the exciting birth of its new member. The baby nursery has been painted, and your baby clothes have been bought.

Your thoughts may have turned now to how you are going to deal with your birthing pains. There are several ways in which your physician will be able to offer you pain relief.

Epidural Pain Relief

An Epidural injection is an option for pain relief, which your physician may suggest. You will feel numb in your pelvic area, and sometimes the numbness will go into your legs, with an Epidural. Your health care provider will place a needle in your lower back.

This needle will be skillfully placed between your spinal cord, and your outer membrane. What is good about an Epidural is that you will feel no pain, and the medication that is being administered, can be stopped, if you need to push for the baby to be born.

The increase in blood volume that takes place during a woman’s pregnancy happens for two reasons.

Firstly it facilitates both fetal and maternal exchanges of nutrients, respiratory gases and various metabolites that take place.

The second factor is so that when a woman naturally loses a lot of blood during the process of delivery the impact on the body will be reduced.

Blood loss can be up to 500 milliliters during a normal birth and up to one thousand for a caesarean section.

This is compensated by what is known medically as the ‘autotranfusion’ of blood from the contracting womb.

Cardiac output is similar to blood volume in that it increases by a similar amount during gestation. In the first cycle it is over a third higher than normal and rises steadily.

From a starting point of 6.7 liters per minute at the end of the last trimester it will be much higher at roughly 8.7 liters per minute. The reasons for this are a more rapid heart rate and more importantly the substantial increase in stroke volume.

Now that you are pregnant you will have to take better care of your health. You will want to eat better foods, which will give you lots of vitamins and minerals.

Cutting down on foods that are high in sugar, or that could break down into sugar, is probably a good thing to do, while you are pregnant.

Sometimes when you are pregnant, you can develop a type of diabetes that is called gestational diabetes. You may have never had a problem with too much sugar in your body before, but now that you are pregnant the diabetes is showing up on your blood test.

Cause of Gestational Diabetes

Gestational diabetes will occur when your placenta produces hormones, and the hormones cause your body to resist insulin, that your pancreas produces. Sometimes your pancreas can not make enough insulin to solve this problem.

When your pancreas can not make enough insulin, you will have too much glucose that will remain in your blood. You will usually get gestational diabetes in the second trimester of your pregnancy, if it is going to occur.