New Mom Vibes

The first thing I did when I found out I was 5 weeks pregnant was google “I’m pregnant, what to do next?” and the typical answers came up: call your doctor, take your prenatal vitamins, pregnancy do’s and don’ts. These were all extremely important things to do but I never thought about how my pregnancy would affect my day to day routine. I also didn’t know how tiring it would be to grow a baby.When thinking back on the very first week that I knew I was pregnant, there were a few extra things I wish I did while I still had energy. I’m not talking about the usual recommendations you find online but the preparation of hibernating during that potentially awful first trimester. Here are five things I would’ve done to prep:

1. Deep Cleaned my House

While I still felt like a normal human being, I would’ve deep cleaned my house. I’m talking about scrubbing every crevice from head to toe. If you end up having extreme exhaustion and nausea like I did, you will have no energy what-so-ever to clean your house. By the time I got home each day from my full time job, all I wanted to do was fall asleep. Most people tell you to just “let your house go” but it would’ve been nice to have started with an extremely clean house.If you also end up having a nose that’s sensitive to smell, deep cleaning your house will probably help with that as well as having scented plugins. 2. Meal Prep/Freeze Meals

I wish I would’ve meal prepped and froze some meals to take out when I really didn’t feel like cooking. I’m normally a pretty healthy eater who likes to cook (or have my fiancé cook) a nice dinner at least three times a week.During the peak of my all day sickness, it got to the point that I was living off of canned soup, SpaghettiOs and frozen lasagna just because I couldn’t stand up in a kitchen for longer than 5 minutes. Although I will say the SpaghettiOs were SO good and gave me nostalgia from my childhood, I’m sure there were certain nutrients I was lacking while eating this. Prepping and freezing meals early on would’ve helped on the days where I didn’t feel like getting out of bed.

3. Not Made Any Plans Far in Advance

Making plans with friends more than a day out was not a good idea. Since I never knew how I was going to feel, I ended up cancelling plans with a lot of people or showing up late because I was busy hugging a toilet.If you’ve let your friends know that you’re pregnant, also talk to them about holding off on making plans too far out (keep in mind that people typically announce their pregnancies after the first trimester due to chances of miscarriage). If they are good friends they will understand. I was happy when most of my friends understood and didn’t mind having girls night in, just watching movies at my house. I was able to get my much needed girl time without being too far from the bathroom!

4. Low Maintenance Hairstyles

This is for my glitzy glam girls that are regulars at the hair salon. Go for low maintenance hairstyles during your first trimester. Luckily I had my hair braided so I didn’t have to do much to my hair during the first trimester. During those 12 weeks, I really had to pick and choose where my energy went and the least thing I wanted to worry about was spending hours styling my hair. Thank God for braids!!!!!

5. Take Off Gel Nails

For those of you who love to get those beautifully done gel manicure, I recommend you saying bye to those for a while. Embarrassingly enough, I had a gel manicure the week I found out I was pregnant and by the next week, I didn’t have enough energy to even go to the nail salon. I ended up not getting my nails done until the end of my first trimester so you can only imagine how disgusting my nails looked.If I could do it all over again, I’d remove my gel nail polish and put on a normal coat of polish. That way, if I didn’t feel like getting them redone, I could just take off the nail polish with remover and wear my plain nails.Overall, no one’s pregnancy is the same and you can’t determine how your first trimester will be. Some of us will be lucky enough to breeze through the first trimester feeling no different than before while others will feel sick and tired 24/7. So these are just a few of my suggestions from my personal experience. What other things would you have done once you found out you were pregnant?