As you approach your due date, your hospital may ask you to come in for a pre-admission interview. The pre-admission interview should be done early enough that you are not in danger of missing it (by having your baby a little early), and late enough in the pregnancy that you will be able to remember all the information you will be given. The name “interview” is a little misleading. Even though part of the interview involves the staff member asking you questions, a great deal of time is spent providing information and it may also include a tour of the labor and delivery ward. Overall, the purpose of the pre-admission interview is to make sure the hospital has all of your information ahead of time, to ensure that the hospital understands your wishes concerning your care and your birth plan if applicable, and to inform you about the hospital’s policies and the birthing process from admission through discharge.

The staff member conducting the interview will be extremely knowledgeable about all aspects of your hospital birth and should be able to answer just about any question you have. The pre-admission interview is the perfect opportunity to bring your list of questions: from when you should come to the hospital, to what you will be allowed to eat, or how long you will have to stay after you have the baby. There is no such thing as a dumb question. You will probably get a tour of the facility and go over the procedures for getting into the labor and delivery ward when you go into labor. Some hospital’s have separate entrances for laboring women, with special elevators and intercoms. These are the kinds of things you want to know about before you are in labor!

You should also be prepared to talk about your wishes concerning drugs, visitors, and other birth plan details. This information is not required at the time of the interview, but sharing these concerns with the staff member at the interview will help the hospital team prepare. For example, if you know you do not want a certain person in the delivery room with you, the staff member can put this in your file and the nurses will know not to let this person in ahead of time. Or, if you do not want drugs to be offered, you should tell the staff member at the interview rather than asking each individual nurse while you are in labor.

It’s likely you will need to bring identification and insurance information. All the paperwork will be filled out and signed at the interview, so that when you actually go into labor, you won’t have to worry about paperwork. When you call the hospital to schedule your interview, ask what you need to bring to the interview so you can be prepared. It’s possible that your doctor may provide you with the pre-admission paperwork and information for your hospital, as well.

Pregnancy presents a unique opportunity to collect quite a few freebies. There are tons of companies out there that want your future business, and they are ready to hand over the goods to get it. Often the mail that results from signing up for these offers is the kind you want: samples, coupons and special offers.

Your doctor’s office and hospital will likely give you items like free diaper bags, changing pads, planners and totes that are provided by formula companies. Even if you don’t plan on using formula, these “gifts” still come in handy. If you do plan on using formula, fill out the card that often comes with these gifts to receive big discounts on formula purchases. You may even receive free, full size cans of formula in the mail. I gave mine to a friend since I was not planning on using formula.

You can also usually get free subscriptions to baby and parenting magazines if you look in the right places. Advertisers are more than happy to get these magazines in your hands if it means you’ll be browsing their ads. The magazines are usually quite full of ads, but they still have a lot of good advice, too.

Another place to look is diaper companies. You can get free diaper samples, as well as coupons for wipes and diapers. Baby food companies, like Gerber for example, also mail out valuable coupons to their customers. Many times, the company will ask for your baby’s due date or birth date when you sign up, and then they will send you age appropriate samples and coupons through your baby’s first year.

Besides looking at websites for different baby companies, you can also get access to great deals and freebies by “becoming a fan” of these companies on Facebook. Sometimes they will offer exclusive offers and savings to their Facebook fans.

Finally, subscribe to deal blogs that cater to moms. There you will find links to giveaways, coupons and more. There is a lot of free stuff out there; you just have to dig for it!

It’s rumored that Amy Winehouse is attempting to gain weight so she can conceive. In case you don’t know who this celebrity is, she is a British singer who is probably more famous for her drunken outbursts and drug habits than she is for her massive bee-hive and former hit song ironically titled “Rehab.” She is incredibly thin, and if this rumor is true, I think a few pounds would probably help quite a bit.

There is a difference between being very thin and underweight. It all has to do with your percentage of body fat. Body fat is essential for storing and releasing the hormone estrogen. That is why athletes like gymnasts who have extremely small amounts of body fat may actually experience cessation of their monthly period. As you know, no menstrual cycle means no ovulation, and no ovulation means no pregnancy.

To maintain a normal, regular menstrual cycle, your body fat needs to be somewhere between 17 and 25 percent. (It should also be noted that having too much body fat can wreak just as much havoc as having too little.) For some women, getting their body fat to a healthier percentage may mean the difference between being infertile and fertile.

To get an initial idea of whether you are in a healthy range, use a BMI calculator. BMI is based on your height and weight, so it does not calculate your body fat percentage, but it may give you a pretty good idea of what your body fat percentage is. If your BMI is really low or high, ask your doctor to check your body fat percentage. A good time to bring up your weight and body fat percentage to your doctor is when you talk to him or her about conceiving.

Becoming a mom requires a whole new set of skills. Besides the obvious skills like changing diapers, feeding and bathing the baby, you have to relearn how to do all sorts of things for yourself, too. Just for fun, here are some things you might want to learn in advance, before you bring your baby home.

Speed Eating
A newborn’s needs are urgent, yet unpredictable. You never know when they will wake up and suddenly need to be fed. You might be in the middle of dinner, but they won’t care! To make sure you get to eat, you have to learn to eat very fast. Prepare meals while the baby is asleep and store them in the fridge in single servings so you can always grab something and pop it in the microwave when you have time. Once you have your meal in front of you, waste no time in eating it. Your family will be amazed by how quickly you can polish off an entire dinner in just minutes. It’s a skill that will come in handy for many years to come.

Doing Everything With One Hand
Some baby’s simply must be held or nursed around the clock. You will go crazy if you never get off the couch, so it’s essential to learn how to do anything with one hand. I could do laundry, load the dishwasher, type an e-mail and apply makeup with one hand, all while holding my son like a football.

Meal Planning
There’s no time to stand in front of the pantry and mull over what you want to make for dinner when you have a baby. It’s best to sit down at the beginning of the week and plan out your meals. You can write them out on a calender and hang it on the fridge. Use your meal plan to go grocery shopping and avoid buying food you won’t use. When dinner time comes around, you will know right away what you need to pull from the pantry and you won’t have to worry when your family asks you, “what’s for dinner?”

Speed Showering
There’s nothing worse than stepping out of the shower and hearing your baby wail. You wonder how long they were crying and you begin to stress about taking showers in the first place. The answer is to shower at the speed of light. If you can shave your legs, soap up your back and rinse the conditioner from your hair all at the same time, you’re doing it right.

Navigating Your House In The Dark
It doesn’t matter if you plan on breastfeeding or bottle feeding, you’ll still have to find your baby in the dark to feed her. If you stub your toe in route to her crib, it will only make the midnight feeding session that much more difficult. It’s hard enough dragging yourself out of bed at 3am! Make a habit of clearing the floor before you go to bed so you don’t trip.

When you’re trying to get pregnant, the sight of your menstrual period can be disappointing, even devastating sometimes. But for mothers who breastfeed and are beginning to think about getting pregnant again, a period is a welcome sign of returning fertility. A few women ovulate before their period returns, and that is why people will always warn you to use birth control while nursing if you don’t want to get pregnant, but for most the first period indicates that ovulation is on its way. It’s not very often a woman wishes for her period, but this is definitely one of those cases.

The average time it takes for a woman’s period to return when she is nursing is 14 months, but it can vary a great deal. I’ve read cases where it took 22 months and I’ve heard of women who get a visit from “Aunt Flo” just 6 weeks after delivery. It would appear that returning fertility is directly tied to nursing, and it is to some extent, but there are always plenty of exceptions. Plenty of women begin to ovulate even though they are still nursing. Weaning doesn’t necessarily guarantee the return of your cycle right away, either.

You might be wondering how much control you have over your fertility and whether you need to wean your toddler in order to conceive again. Fortunately, very few women need to go as far as to wean completely to get pregnant again. Usually reducing the frequency or duration of breastfeeding is all it will take to allow fertility to return. An abrupt change, such as the baby sleeping through the night, is especially effective. You could also try eliminating a daytime feeding as well.

Another thing to consider is that your body probably knows when it is ready to carry a pregnancy again. You may just want to let nature take its course and wait a few more months. After all, if your toddler is still nursing, he or she may not be ready to share you with a sibling anyway.

This week last year, I was walking laps around my house, around the block, around the mall and just about everywhere else. I was massaging every square inch of my ankles and feet. I was ordering the spiciest burritos on the menu at San Jose’s. I was watching TV in a squatting position and mopping the floors full speed. I was doing all these things because I was 39 weeks pregnant and completely sick of it. At one point, I burst into tears and sobbed to my husband, “I don’t want to be pregnant anymore!!” The last few weeks of pregnancy can seem so long, be full of so much discomfort and you’d think they would cure any women from wanting another child. The only think you can do is try to think of creative ways to pass the time so you forget you are so close to your due date.

If the nesting urge has hit, it’s a good time to throw yourself into those home projects with all of your focus. If you’ve cleaned everything in sight, start organizing. After all, you probably won’t get a chance to do so for the next year! Need some ideas? How about going through your makeup bag? Throw away everything that is discolored, broken, smelly or ugly. Make a list of items you want to replace. Wash and dry all of your brushes. Wipe out the make-up case before restocking. Or, when is the last time you cleaned the baseboards? Dust is always getting swept from the corners of the rooms, but the baseboards are often neglected. You may not even notice how dirty they are until you see your baby picking dust bunnies off of them and tasting them. Grab a sponge and some warm water with just a little bit of soap. Some women swear they went into labor because they were crawling around on their hands and knees, so it can’t hurt, right?

If you don’t feel like cleaning, rent a bunch of movies and have a movie night with your husband or your friends. Make some popcorn and add in your favorite movie snacks. You could always watch all the movies on my list of favorite pregnancy-themed movies here.

Another fun way to distract yourself is to take a mini-weekend vacation somewhere nearby, also known as a babymoon. Even if you’re in the next town, spending a night or two at a hotel can really help you to relax and have fun. Pick a hotel with a pool, since the water will make you feel weightless and relieve a lot of the discomfort common in late pregnancy.

What are some other ways you like to distract yourself and relax?

Nearly two months ago I blogged about a study conducted in Australia that claimed “baby brain,” or the memory loss many pregnant women claim to experience, is all in our heads. I believe my response was, “They are nuts!” If you read my story about getting lost in my own town, you’d understand why. Well now there is another study that comes from the University of Bradford that links pregnancy hormones to spacial memory loss, (think, “where did I leave my keys?” or “how do I get home from here?”) This is almost as confusing as the contradictory research about eggs being healthy or not. Except in this case, I don’t need official research to prove the obvious. I remember my memory loss! (Ha.)

The study compared a group of pregnant woman against a group of non-pregnant woman over the period of about a year, during pregnancy and three months after. All the women were given spacial memory tests and had their mood, anxiety levels and attention spans tested. Their hormone levels were also measured. The pregnant women scored ten percent lower than the non-pregnant women across the board. Besides spacial memory loss, pregnant women were found to experience more depression and anxiety. That’s no surprise. When you walk into a room five times in a row and still can’t remember why, you’re bound to feel depressed or anxious.

The researchers did mention that while the spacial memory loss experienced during pregnancy was a real symptom, more research is needed to determine whether hormones are the only cause. Loss of sleep and stress could also account for slightly reduced memory function. If that were the case, I would have been a lost cause in college. I still maintain that pregnancy causes memory loss and there are multitudes of women out there who will testify along with me.

It happened very quickly. I woke up one morning and my hands felt slightly stiff. As I curled my fingers and tried to make a fist I realized they felt… fat. I managed to turn on the light, only to see what looked like someone else’s hand, with fingers that could only be described as marshmallows. Ah, pregnancy induced edema: it’s not just “cankles” you have to worry about.

The part that bothered me the most was the fact that my wedding ring no longer fit. I don’t wear a lot of rings, but my wedding ring is very special to me and I’m sure many of you readers can understand. I also didn’t like looking single. I felt like I would walk out into the world with my large pregnant belly and immediately be judged. So, I found a new home for my wedding ring and a new ring for my swollen finger.

I didn’t want to leave my wedding ring in a box for the next several months, so I dug out a white gold chain and removed the pendant. I slid the ring onto the chain and wore it as a necklace on most days. One of my friends was selling Lia Sophia jewelry at the time and I booked a party hoping to snag some free jewelry. I found the perfect wedding ring stand-in: a silver ring with tiny crystals and mother-of-pearl set in the wide band. It was completely different from my wedding ring and yet totally glamorous. Even better, it gave my swollen fingers room to breath and room to grow. I don’t care if it doesn’t fit me now, I’m holding onto it for the next time I get pregnant!

Did your hands swell up when you were pregnant? What did you do with your favorite rings? Did you move them to a different finger? Slide them onto a chain and wear them as a necklace? Or did you store them away until you could wear them again?

Here is a list of some of my favorite movies featuring pregnancy:

Fools Rush In
I’m a sucker for dramatic child birth scenes in movies, and I know I’m not the only one! When Salma Hayek goes into labor on the bridge in the pouring rain, Matthew Perry yells, “but we’re on a dam!” as though that mattered! Every time she screams, he screams with her and his face is priceless. I always tear up when they cuddle their new baby girl together for the first time.

Knocked Up
I love how this movie brought up all the awkward issues of pregnancy and made them so funny. I still can’t believe the shot at the end when she is pushing the baby out. Did they really show that? (Oh yes, they did.) It may have not been entirely realistic, but I think it’s safe to say that movie might have proven to be effective birth control for quite a few teens out there.

Rugged Gold (Made for TV Movie – 1994)
I’ll be honest, I don’t remember anything about this movie save for one scene in which the main character gives birth all by herself in a cabin in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. Ever since I saw that scene (I was in middle school at the time), I knew I wanted to give birth naturally. The way she harnessed herself up on the bed and yelled with that final push… her toughness inspired me. I thought she was the coolest woman on the planet. It didn’t hurt that the movie was based on a true story, either.

Baby Mama
I don’t think I stopped laughing throughout this whole movie and the ending even managed to be sweet. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are so funny together. Fey’s determination to control everything and Poehler’s attempts to fake a pregnancy are a perfect pair. In the end, they are both surprised!

Juno
I can’t make a list of pregnancy-themed movies without including this one, even if the ending made me cry! “Someday you’ll be back here honey… on your terms.”

I recently read that Gisele Bundchen had her pregnant belly airbrushed out of her fashion photo shoots because her pregnancy was “too sacred” to share with the world. What a striking statement to make in contrast to the very public belly (and body) baring photos that have been featured on magazine covers by celebrities like Britney Spears, Demi Moore, and Christina Aguilera. Showing off your pregnant belly is the norm these days, not hiding it. All you have to do is do a Google image search for “pregnant” and you’ll find thousands of women, not just celebrities, showing off their bumps in all stages of pregnancy (sometimes even postpartum). I wasn’t as surprised by the way she hid her pregnancy as I was about the reason. Usually, when a woman hides her pregnant figure it means she does not like how it looks, or she is trying to be modest. Hiding it because it’s sacred? That one I’ve never heard before.

I think what may set a woman like Gisele apart from the rest of us (besides the obvious) is the fact that her body is always on display. It makes sense that she would want to keep this part of her life private. It is the opposite for many women, since pregnancy might be the only time they find themselves uploading pictures of their midriff onto the internet. It’s a time when they can be proud of their midsection, regardless of how flat or toned it was before. People are entranced by pregnant bellies, however big or small. Pregnant women are especially always comparing pregnancy to pregnancy, month to month, wondering if they are carrying high or low, big or small.

People feel like they are entitled to see pictures of a woman when she is pregnant, but I think it really should be the woman’s choice. I don’t think it was wrong for Gisele to request that her pictures were airbrushed. I’m sure she has plenty of belly pictures at home for her family to admire.