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STATS:

Baby size: Corn. She’s rapidly gaining weight, lung tissue and brain cells.

How far along: 24 weeks. VIABILITY! YAY!

Both hubby and I are happy to be finally hitting the viability milestone. It seems like the weeks have slowed down again, dragging along. But it’s great to think that if something unfortunate were to happen, Alexis would have a chance of survival. I don’t even want to think about it, but I do, because I know things happen. I’ve seen them happen.

On a happier note….

Total weight gain: 1 pound (152lb) this week. After gaining 2 pounds a week for the last two weeks and then seeing a strange 1.5 lbs come out of nowhere, I decided to see where my food intake was at ( I had stopped inputting all my food for a bit). And instantly I saw the problem. I was going off of my 1st trimester mentality, where regardless of how much I ate, I still needed to eat more to meet my calorie goal. So now that I am in my 2nd trimester, and food isn’t so gross to me,I get the necessary amount of calories by eating normally. However in my mind, I still think that I hadn’t had enough and want make sure I get in one last nutritious meal before bed like I did in the first trimester ( does that make sense?). And that’s exactly where that extra pound a week was coming from. I don’t want to continue gaining double each week , thank you very much, I am very happy with my 1 pound that is necessary and recommended- it’s not good for Alexis and it’s not going to be good for me.  So now that I know what’s happening, I am back in the “1 lb a week” game

Sleep: Strangely, it’s been good. I’m loving my pillows. I still get up 3-4 times a night, but I learned to keep my mind blank while I go to the bathroom, otherwise a flurry of thoughts wake me up. Alexis has been kicking a lot during the night, which isn’t normal for her. I attribute it to the fact that I am more active during the day than I was before and the night is now the only time when she gets to be awake.

Maternity Clothes: Yoga pants, maternity jeans, maternity tops. I have found a few maternity companies I really like and I am loving their clothes.

Food cravings : Anything fresh- fruit, vegetables, salads

Food aversions: None

Symptoms:

Heartburn – It’s been much better. I am still not taking anything for it, but I’ve found tomatoes give me heartburn so I’ve been more careful with them.
Rash – It’s less itchy, more manageable. I really think it’s because of the detergent.
Fatigue – I swear there are days/weeks when Alexis must be growing a lot, because I’d be EXHAUSTED for no real reason and she’s pretty quiet. And then a few days later I am fine and she’s all active and kicking.

Exercise: I have been doing pregnancy ab exercises to strengthen my core, kegels and certain hip stretchers daily. We also go walking every day. So I’ve been feeling really good about it.

Movement:

She has one very active day, one quieter day. She totally kicks “on command” now. All I have to do is put my hands on my belly and start talking to her, or have Andrew talk to her. She loves when daddy talks :)
This afternoon I was laying on my side and she literally LIFTED UP my belly off the couch by pushing off of it with her body. That was the freakiest feeling EVER!
Oh and her favorite pastime is, obviously, bouncing on my bladder. How fun!

Belly Button: Still  an innie but it’s totally itching to come out. If I sit in a certain position, I can almost say it becomes an outie.

Gender: GIRL!

What I’m looking forward to:
My glucose test ( is that weird?)

What I miss:
Having good hair :( I HATE my hair right now. It’s  weak and stringy and just yuck. And I can’t even highlight it until I give birth. Back before pregnancy, it would get bleached in the sun when I’d be going to the beach constantly. But that’s not happening now, so I am stuck with grubby hair.

 And hey, you guys, would you do me a favor?

The stats are TOP BABY BLOGS seemed to have been reset, so would every single one of you, pretty please, click on the button below to vote? ( it takes 1 click + 1 to confirm)

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RULES:

1. If you haven’t yet, join the challenge here: GET FIT and GET HEALTHY
2. Every Saturday come back to The Art of Making a Babyand ShutterMama to read the tips on how to be fitter, healthier and more confident.
3. Weekly write a post about your progress, following the questionnaire below, take a self-portrait (optional) and link up with us.
4. Don’t forget to grab the GET FIT challenge button on the sidebar and display it proudly on your blog or GET FIT post.
5. Link your post with Selfie Saturdays if you took your week’s self-portrait.

Vitamin and Mineral Supplements.

In the course of my preparation for pregnancy, one of the topics I did extensive research on was vitamin and mineral supplements.

We all know the importance of taking daily vitamins, especially if our diet leaves something to be desired. Now supplementation it’s not as simple as pop a pill each morning if you want to do it right.

There’s vitamin toxicity to pay attention to, minerals mashing together in all the wrong ways and negating each other, proper absorption, etc etc…

Here’re a few important fact everyone taking a supplement needs to know. This is especially useful to pregnant women or those TTCing, because having proper nutrients in your body is crucial:

There are certain minerals and foods that prevent absoption of others and vitamins that aid in absoption. You need to know that to get the maximum  out of your vitamins.

• Pretty much anything interferes with iron absorption, so if your goal is to make sure you have plenty of iron in your stores, read the following:
            -do NOT mix calcium rich foods with iron rich foods, the same goes for supplements. Take iron and calcium supplement at least 2 hours apart.
            -do NOT drink tea after eating an iron rich food or taking an iron supplement.
            -the easiest way is to make sure you take an iron supplement completely separate with iron rich food
            – take vitamin C with iron for best absorption.If you’re a vegetarian, great sources of iron include: beans/lentils,some nuts, spinach, collard greens. Make sure to add some of those at every meal.
• If you’re taking an iron supplement, make sure to take zinc and copper with it. Iron supplements interfere with the absorption of copper, which in turn is very closely related to zinc. So if you’re taking copper, you need to supplement it with zinc and visa versa. Since excess of one will give you a deficiency of the other So since iron interferes with copper and copper interferes with zinc, you need to take all three to make sure you’re even. In nature it’s done automatically, most foods high in iron are also high in zinc and copper. Never exceed 100% of DV an any of these minerals, because of it’s close relation and intricate balance system.
• Calcium is best absorbed with Vitamins D. Most  Calcium supplements have vitamin D in it, just make sure it doesn’t exceed 50% DV, since vitamin D has a toxicity level.
• It’s hard to get enough DHA in a pill form and it’s pretty expensive so look for a morning cereal that is a good source of Omega-3s and load up on some avocado and walnuts.
• FOLIC ACID: TAKE IT!!!! Please please please, if you are of childbearing age and not infertile, please take a folic acid supplement, even if you’re not “planning” any more kids. Neural tube develops during the first 27 days of pregnancy, well before most women even know they’re pregnant. Folic acid can prevent most neural tube defects in a baby as long as you take it before and during the first month of pregnancy. Unless you’re like me and plan pregnancies that meticulously, the last thing you’d want is to get pregnant, not know it for a month and miss that 30 day window.

If you’re pregnant or planning to get pregnant:

NEVER EVER (unless advised by a doctor) exceed 100% of DV on any supplement. It’s hard because most over the counter prenatals stuff 200-300%DV of vitamins in it to appeal to the less educated women thinking they’re getting a better value. You are NOT! You should be getting plenty from food, so all you need to do is create a safety net.

Fat soluble vitamins get packed away in your fat thus making it possible to create a toxicity hardful to a fetus if you don’t know what you’re doing.

-Do not take vitamin A in any form but beta-carotene, that includes milk and animal products that have a decent amount of vitamin A in retinoid form. High doses of vitamin A causes birth defect and it’s easy to go over board if you’re a meat eater and take supplements
-Watch your vitamin D intake.
- Vitamin E has been linked with heart defects at birth. That is even vitamin E taken before pregnancy at as low as 2/3 of recommended daily value (DV). Now since, oil has lot of vitamin E, I suspect those finding might have had something to do with women who ate lots of oily foods that are already bad for the baby. But we can’t know for sure, and these are my personal speculations. I am not taking any vitamin E supplement, since we get plenty through oil use and nuts.

Folic acid is a MUST before you’re even pregnant.
Supplemental iron is helpful taken before pregnancy so that you go into it with your stores full of iron.
Unless you eat lots of fruits and veggies ( and I do mean lots and varied, making up most of your meals), you might not need to supplement A,C or K vitamins, since you get plenty from fruits and veggies.

Since everything tend to interfere with everything and you can’t take more than 100% of the certain type of vitamin..bla bla bla… I found the best way to make it easy is to buy each supplement separately and take them in batches:

iron+C+zinc+copper= 1st batch
Calcium+D= 2nd batch
Folic+ B+DHA+other= 3rd batch

So there you have it!

Now, my entry for week 12

1. Height: 5’11″, weight: 134 lb

2. Your fitness challenge(s) for this week: 30 minutes of pilates every other day + 30 minutes of cardio ( rollerblading, running, swimming or treadmill) every other day+20 sit-ups every hour for 8 hours on cardio days. Special exercises designed for pregnancy to increase flexibility (daily) + Kegels (twice daily). A total of about an hour or more of physical activity a day.

3. Your health challenge(s) for this week: My eating habits are close to perfect, however I could improve on my water intake. My goal will be 8 glasses of water daily + continue eating the way I do now. Start snacking more during the day to prepare for the first trimester of morning sickness.

• Fitness: It was awesome. I did everything I set out to do. Worked out daily. I feel it’s starting to become a habit, one that I will not want to give up. Yesterday, hubby and I even did both strength and cardio and abs in one day, even though we’re supposed to do cardio/strength every other day.
• Water: I’m back to my KleenKanteen bottle and being hydrated.
• Food:Food intake was perfect. Nothing to complain about.
  5. Failures and slip-ups: Can’t say anything here. I’m getting in the groove and getting stronger.

6. Weekly challenge wisdom: It’s true that they say it takes a while to form a habit, but once that habit forms it becomes a joy to do the most mundane things.
 
7. Advice to fellow GET FIT members: Stick with it! It will get better But if you give up now, it’ll NEVER get better. You will always start and stop and start and stop and get nowhere, or give up and continue living unhealthy and overweight.

{for more shots, go to my photography blog, Selfie Magic}

LINK UP:

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It is our 8th year together. Our 8th Valentine’s Day together and our 8th year of marriage.
Eight years seem like a lifetime and a blink of an eye. I know you so well, sometimes it seems we are one person.

You have grown so much in these 8 years, as a man, a husband and a friend.
We complete each other, and each other’s sentences.
We’re always on the same page.
We think the same thoughts, we fear the same things, we love the same stuff.

I absolutely love it when you come to me each morning and give me “morning kisses”, and then rush down to cut my “morning fruit”. It has become our routine, however it is never going to get boring.

I love how we have special names for each other, which evolved into more complicated and more adorable names over the years, and transformed into unpronounceable words that only you and I can undertstand and say.

I love how we know each other strengths and weaknesses and help each other do things we don’t like. I am good at research and marketing, you are great at sales. I’m a planner, you’re a procrastinator. I hate doing dishes, you don’t mind taking it over for me.

I love how we have the exact same parenting styles, even though we don’t have kids yet.

I love how you put up with my picture taking and actually get into it once in a while.

You are my best and my only one.
From the day we spoke on the phone for the first time at 3 am my time for 3 hours to this moment on.

I can’t imagine a more perfect man for me.

I LOVE YOU!

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Linking up with Say Hi Sunday and Sunday Snapshot

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 This blog has been a bit slow lately, I admit, but there is a very good reason for that. For the past 2 weeks I have been busy working on my new separate photoblog, Selfie Magic. It is not a professional photography website, it’s simply a blog space where I can put all of my photos and participate in challenges and photo linkies without clogging up my main blog. I have always felt bad posting a lot of photos on The Art of Making a Baby, because it’s a baby blog and the goal of it was to journal my experience going through the pregnancy and pre-pregnancy progress, and turn it into a baby blog.

There is a catch though! My new photoblog has a very heavy self portraiture slant. I used to do self-portraits regularly being part of a Flickr selfie group, and stopped when I moved to NYC to pursue modeling. Hindsight being 20/20, that’s when I should have concentrating on photography because, to be honest, I’ve gone to some fabulous places and met lots of fabulous people. What stopped me was that you don’t really expect a NY model to be running around with a big heavy camera in her hands ( I did get to teach some photographers how to use their cameras LOL). So now I’d like to resume shooting self-portraits, not as many as before, but definitely make more effort that i have recently. I’ll be also posting a lot of non-selfies, so it’s not going to be all about me (Whew!)

The thing that I am excited about the most is the new weekly photo linky I’ll be hosting, called SELFIE SATURDAYS. It’s designed to help women learn to take good pictures of themselves and to break out of the box that most of us are currently in. I’ll be posting tips on how to shoot certain types of self-portraits weekly as well as setting a theme for each week to get our creative juices flowing.

You can participate in Selfie Saturdays in conjunction with or independent of our new GET FIT Challenge, though I would love for you to join in on it too.

I would really love for all of your to participate and to go over to Selfie Magic and start following it as well. If you’re using a feed reader, you can get  Selfie Magic feed here. If you prefer receiving updates in your email box, subscribe by email.

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Don’t forget to check out  our new GET FIT Challenge, and join if you haven’t already.

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I am super duper excited! I am absolutely STOKED! And I think you, guys, are going to LOVE IT!

The beautiful {shutter}mama and I, The Art of Making a Baby, would love to present to you a NEW CHALLENGE that will change your life! It will teach you to LOVE yourself and your body, to be strong mentally and physically, to be confident and to learn how to shoot self-portraits at the same time :) And all you have to do is join the PARTY!

I have not been in the blogging word for long, but one thing I have noticed almost right away is lack of self-confidence in women here. We all take photos, beautiful inspiring photos, and yet most of us complain that they can barely find one or two good pictures of themselves or their families. Virtually every single blogger, to some extent, struggles with weight and EVERYONE wants to eat healthier, be healthier, be FIT and love themselves. A lot of women here are in their postpartum period and need motivation and help in getting over the  hump that “extra 5 pregnancy pounds/diapers/feedings” is.

It’s time to stop complaining and feeling guilty and take matters into our own hands! Let’s be FIT! Let’s be HEALTHY! Let’s be CONFIDENT!

The idea of a GET FIT challenge was pioneered by Sonya from {shutter}mama. When I found out about it, I had to partner up with her. I am way to passionate about health and helping people be a better version of themselves, not to take this on with Sonya.

The goal is to get you to move, to give up bad eating habits and to take more pictures of yourself!

If you want some “girlfriend” help in getting fit, getting healthy and feeling good about your body, then YOU ARE IN THE RIGHT PLACE.

So here is how it’s going to work:

1. Go ahead and join in the linky below. Even if you’re hesitant about it, still try it out. I know we’re all busy and we all barely have time to exercise and eat well. But we’re talking about our health! AND our kids’ health, because our kids learn from us. The pace of the challenge will be determined by you and you only! So take the plunge to your new BETTER self!

2. Every Saturday {shutter}mama and I will be hosting this challenge on both our blogs, with tips on how to exercise, eat better and  help you stay motivated. In addition to that, we’ll be hosting a SELFIE SATURDAY photo challenge on my new photography blog, Selfie Magic, as a part of this effort to help women with their body image. We will go over methods of doing self portraiture and flattering angles while shooting yourself, weekly themes, as well link up with our weekly Self Portrait and a Get Fit posts.

3. Your job is to check in every Saturday with a post about your current weight (if you choose to measure and share it), your progress with food and exercise and a self portrait. They key is to be completely honest about your achivements and failures. We’re all in the same boat here, some better off than other, but we all need support. You are free to modify any part of the challenge to fit your life. Everyone is different and we don’t expect things to work the same for everyone. That is why we’ll be posting a list of fitness and food habits challenges for the first week, that you can pick from or create your own. It’ll be your first step to being a healthier you!

Be sure to check with The Art of Making a Baby and {Shutter}Mama each week since we’ll be doing separate posts every Saturday about both food and exercise,and then head on over to Selfie Magic for a Self Portrait lesson and link up.

Now onto the goals. We realize that everyone is in a different situation and has different strengths and weaknesses and  amounts of time to devote to their own well-being. Therefore you’re encouraged to set your own goals. But to get you started, here are some sample health challenges/goals that you could use.  Afterward you’ve picked a health goal  head over to {Shutter}Mama to view the fitness part of this challenge.

What you could do to improve your eating habits (suggestions):

1.  Eliminate  soft drinks/sodas.
{I am sure I do not need to list the reasons for why soft drinks are bad, but in any case, here we go: empty sugar, extra caffeine dependence, tooth decay, bone weakening ( from an ingredient in sodas) and tons and tons of chemicals.}
2.  Drink 8 glasses of water a day.
{Hydration is one of the most important things that can keep us young and healthy. Helps skin elasticity too, so drop those wrinkle creams and drink up. There’s an iPhone app for that, too.}
3. Eat at least 1 salad a day
{There’s only 8 calories in a cup of romaine lettuce, yet it contains 80% of DV for Vitamin A , 19% Vitamin C, 60% Vitamin K and 16% of Folate.}
4. Cut down fatty and/or processed meat consumption to at most once a week
{How meat is killing you}
5. DROP THAT POTATO CHIPS BAG!
6. Make only whole grain meals instead of refined grains
7. Use less salt.
8.  Start writing down every calorie you eat {recording everything you eat and counting calories helps you realize the nutritional mistakes you make throughout the day and keeps you from pigging out those cookies at 10 pm}
9. Eat no more than 1 sweet treat a day
10. Eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables daily
11. Make a home cooked meal using the healthiest ingredients and no oil at least 3 times a week ( mac and cheese or potatoes and steak do not count as a healthy meal)

You can pick just one challenge, or as many as you’d like. If you feel you’re disciplined enough to handle a few challenges, go for it! You can come up with your own challenge that fits your life better and share it with everyone.

Below is the format you can use to track your progress and share with our GET FIT participants in your weekly posts.

So for this week, publish a post with your “Fitness and Health Goals, a picture of your “DREAM SELF” and our Challenge buttons below, join up in our linkies {GET FIT Challenge(below) and Selfie Saturday} using the post’s URL, and get ready to GET FIT.
Your initial post and first check-in is due this Saturday, Feb 5th!

Don’t forget to display the GET FIT GET HEALTHY buttons ( code on the sidebar)!

1. All is Bright 2. Branson 3. Darlin' Mommy & Wife 4. young and restless 5. GET FIT 6. Kristin's Notes 7. Kristin's Notes 8. LipstickLoveLetters 9. Hot Coffee Mama 10. Getting Fit

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Hello, world!

This week ( read: yesterday) I finally got enough time between everything that I am doing to participate in one of Ashley’s weekly challenges.
The prompts were: Texture, Fog, Button, Beverage, Seventeens. Really ordinary subjects and really challenging at the same time unless you’re content with simply taking a picture of the named items. Of course I am not. There is nothing more boring to me than shooting an item. Just an item without a cool angle, or interesting framing, or great outside-the-box idea.

So this week I decided to do a self-portrait twist on all of the prompts. Seeing as I am currently working on a challenge of my own that is going to be centered on taking self-portraits and will be hosting it on  a new photography focused blog ( coming soon). That means that soon I will have two blogs,  a personal one where I journal all my thoughts, events and our baby journey, and a photo blog where I will host challenges, participate in photo linkys and post anything and everything photography related.

So without further edo, i present to you the self-portrait version of this week’s Scavenger Hunt items ( all photos taken by me and have me in them)

1. TEXTURE

This was probably the most difficult to come up with, since texture is not something that you can turn into a creative selfie, unless you simply want to use texture in the post processing which seemed too easy.
Our driveway has the most amazing (sometimes mildew covered ) texture, worked perfectly.
Linking up with Shadow Shot Sunday

2. FOG

When I saw this item , I thought how on earth are we expected to take a picture of fog. First, I don’t get up nearly early enough; secondly, I live in Florida ( i don’t think I’ve seen much fog over the years, but that could be due to me being a late sleeper). So as I was standing in the shower contemplating this week’s items and how to take them, I saw fog enveloping me ( SCORE!). I ran out naked, cold and dripping, grabbed my camera and jumped back in. The sun shining through the window across from me and the steam rising from the hot shower were PERFECT. I did have to wipe the lens after every shot, but eventually I got enough to pick a winner.

3. BUTTON

Again, a seemingly boring subject. I had to spice it up. I remembered my favorite magnet was stashed away somewhere in the guest room ( our fridge is stainless steel and doesn’t hold magnets)- the PANIC BUTTON! I wish the picture could produce the sound that button makes when pressed.

4. BEVERAGE

I refused to take a picture of a beverage on its own. No! When I was over at my neighbor’s house I saw a pack of Kool-Aid sitting there and remembered reading somewhere that you can clean toilets with Kool-Aid. I don’t drink anything that is not natural ( my drink of choice is water, or tea), so I thought I’d be funny to document the horrible contents of Kool-Aid drink. You can see our tongues really show how “organic and natural” it is. NOT! What won’t I sacrifice for photography? Even my health. LOL

5. SEVENTIES

This was easy! I dug into my archive! About a year ago i did a shot that I named Flower Power. It doesn’t get more 70s than this.

And that’s it for today! Looking forward to the next one, where I will hopefully see you on my new photography oriented blog.

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Please don’t forget to VOTE daily!

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I used to be a huge self portrait “artist”. Each day/week I’d come up with another fun idea for a self-portrait. Hell, my whole flickr account is one massive self portrait ( I promise I am not in love with myself, i just find it much easier to bring ideas to life when i don’t have to make anyone pose for me. And photographing inanimate objects…. eh! not my cup of tea).

Now that being said, I have to disappoint everyone with a pretty lame SP. BUT… I have an excuse. And a good one.
My spoiled by warmth body cannot handle the horrible temperatures of globalwarming Florida. It has been in the low 60s! 60s!!!!
That is good 20 degrees below my comfort zone. Northerners! No snickering!
So to illustrate what I have been doing this whole week, I am posting this picture.
I have been FREEZING, SLEEPING, WEARING THERMAL PJS, FUZZY STRIPED SOCKIES ( don’t you love them? ) and hugging my husband to death ( for warmth. No other reason).
Even my favorite Travis ( one of the black kitties) kept crawling under the blanket every night with me and tucking his wet cold nose in my arm ( that part I do love).

So here we go. That is me every morning  for the past week.

Please don’t fogrget to VOTE daily!

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