Pregnancy: What to Expect and How to Prepare

Embarking on the journey of pregnancy can be both exciting and overwhelming. This comprehensive guide offers valuable insights into what to expect during pregnancy and how to prepare for this transformative experience. From the early stages of conception to the final moments of labor and delivery, you'll find a wealth of information on prenatal care, nutrition, exercise, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. We'll address common pregnancy symptoms, potential complications, and provide tips for managing discomfort. Additionally, we'll delve into the emotional aspects of pregnancy and offer guidance on creating a supportive environment. Get ready to navigate pregnancy with confidence and embrace the joy of welcoming your little one into the world.

How Hollywood Gets Birth So Wrong

Childbirth is not the same as it is shown in TV shows and movies. Everybody is different, every baby is different, and the pregnancy is not the same for all. Hollywood’s depiction of childbirth is completely different from reality. Butterbean covers what actually happens before birth. Read on to find out.

thinking,,,,,,,, darling who has a cryptic pregnancy....... [insert twst character here] reacting to it,,, maybe you and floyd and you're both a little dense because neither of you could have ever guessed. T_T

"what do you mean you were pregnant this whole time???? i thought shrimpy just got softer. :D" - floyb mindset.

in floyd's defense, he has no idea how human pregnancies work. he slept through that part of land boot camp!!! fell asleep the minute the professor started droning on about how humans don't lay eggs like mers do. jade can only chuckle (maybe he knew, but in classic jade fashion he won't tell because it's much more entertaining to sit back and watch everyone slowly figure it out) and azul is shaking his head in disbelief. had he known, he would have prepared well in advance to lend a helping hand. and you're just so amazed because maybe you were told you're unable to get pregnant, but somehow it happened and you had no idea all this time.

thank you to floyd and his mer virility for doing what was thought to be the impossible!!!!!! <3

Question, if I suspect I might be pregnant should I skip my next T dose until I know for certain that I’m not? I haven’t taken a pregnancy test yet bc I know it’s likely too early to get a clear result (I’ll take one next week if I can manage to get into town). I’ve been experiencing some early signs of pregnancy and I did have unprotected sex almost two weeks ago, so it’s definitely possible. I don’t know what to do. I refuse to go to my family about this. I know they’d just berate me. Also they’re transphobic, so I don’t talk to them about this stuff. Idk. Maybe I’ll just skip this week’s dose and take a pregnancy test next week, and go from there? Idk. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Especially from other trans people.

Once when I was in college, my period was late. While I wasn't too worried I was pregnant (I'd recently had protected sex), I definitely didn't want to risk it. I googled some home remedies for how to induce a period, and someone recommended parsley tea.

A lot of the medical literature about said parsley tea is mixed. Some say it's highly nutritious, but it's definitely bad in large quantities (kidney failure is a possible side effect.)

But, uh. It worked. The instructions told me to drink it twice a day for three days, and on the third day, it induced my period, exactly as I was told. No baby for me. No negative side effects beyond the fact that it tastes like ass, and I was too scared to add honey or anything that might make it palatable.

I'm 100% not suggesting this for everyone, and again, KIDNEY FAILURE IS A POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECT IN LARGE QUANTITIES, let's not under-emphasize that!

But. I would rather be dead than be forced to carry a pregnancy I don't want, and I know a lot of people with uteruses who feel the same way. So, for $6, here's how you induce your period at home:

Boil water.

Add in parsley. It doesn't matter if it's Italian or curly. You can buy it for like $2 at the store. I bought three bunches and used half in each batch of tea for three days.

Kill the heat and let steep for a minimum of 30 minutes.

Drink.

That's it. If our laws are going to come from the dark ages, then we're going back to the solutions our ancestors have been using for centuries.

it’s all the rest of what i want with you

connor dewar/brandon duhaime :: 8k

Summary:

“Brandon,” Connor says with a sigh. “There’s no baby in there.”

“Not yet,” Brandon says. Connor feels his stomach twist, almost like what he would imagine a baby kicking to feel like.

in these trying times of dewvorce, may i offer you 8k of pwp inspired by @stillfertile’s wonderful art which i had. several breakdowns about 🫶 anyway please enjoy!!!

I remember your details for things I've never considered, in your fanfics! Oddly its mostly the pregnancy fanfics that stick out to me the most, how Arthur warms up the stethoscope before using it on her, or the one about Abby waiting for vincent to come home. They've always stuck in my mind due to some of the details and how easy it was to visualize them super well, so thats what I remember the most! Good details and great at putting together scenes.

I also remember the zoned out mitsunari fanfic hehehe

Anon or not, tell me what passage, fic, line of narration, or anything you remember about me as a writer (ask was sent to the wrong blog, but I'll answer it here anyway since it is a writing related question!)

About details! I usually try to keep two main things in mind when I come up with them. First one is to keep who I'm describing in mind. With the Arthur x Reader pregnancy fic in particular, I remembered that he was a former doctor and that he has an knack for noticing and remembering small details. In the fic, he says that his partner complained last time he had checked in that the bell was cold, so for this checkup, he warmed it for his partner's sake.

Funnily enough, the stethoscope moment almost didn't happen as when I looking through my original notes, it was up for debate. Screenie below to show how the thought process sort of went (and with the timestamp pictured because I wasn't kidding when I said this fic came to me in the middle of the night, not even fully convinced I was gonna participate in Arthur Week then)

Same can be shown with the Abby waiting for Vincent fic. I'm assuming you're talking about the 'First Kicks' fic where Abby is waiting for Vincent as a storm brews outside as I also a WIP Wednesday where Vincent comes home to find her sleeping, but I'll go with First Kicks for example's sake.

Abby's a nervous person, especially worried when Vincent was caught in the storm. She calms herself when she looks at her reflection and sees her anxious self, realizing that's she's making a mountain out of a mole hill, and talks to her son to settle her nerves.

The other thing I keep in mind is an offshoot of 'show don't tell' in that, to help enrich a scene, evoke the five major senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste).  The quiet of the room while Arthur's listens to the baby's heartbeat (so quiet, a pin dropping would sound like a gun going off), the blue satin ribbons on the reader's clothes, how the stethoscope tickles when it makes contact, etc.

Same thing with Abby's story: Abby looks at herself in the window with the rain pouring down, which breaks up her reflection as rain does on windows; hearing the door open and some muttered Dutch lets Abby know that Vincent's back; smelling the rain on him because he was just outside and got soaked in it; feeling those cold hands on her belly and her jumping back because cold (previously wet) hands touching your belly? It'd be a surprise at the very least!

And because I'm feeling cheeky, all the things can also be applied to the zoned-out Mitsunari fic (mind the summary and the tags, this is a smoot fic). Keeping both characters in mind (Houki is a proper lady that wants to try something but is a little embarrassed about it so she sneaks around to get what she wants, while Mitsunari is also a curious critter and wanted to see what Houki was trying to do and isn't judging her for tricking him) and scene-chewing in describing things with the five major senses (salty taste of Mitsunari's finger, feeling the cool air on her [redacted], hearing his whispers against her ear, seeing that Mitsun has two hands (two hands!) and where they decide to travel), things like that.

(No, I'm not screenshotting an example from that fic for propriety's sake, ya filthy animals.)

So, yeah, that's a little bit about me explaining how I do some details and how it all can come together to make a scene in a story. Kinda sorry for the rambling if this was something you knew about already, but I had fun discussing details either way.

Thanks for the ask, Scummy!

81k and I are a weird match. he seems like a 10x engineer to me (hard to tell from the outside, of course) but he thinks software is kind of an arbitrary specialization and yearns to be good at drawing. whereas I'm moderately good at art but think it's approximately a worthless skill that it's almost, like, sinful to invest more into in, and software is the true test of my intellect and character which I have failed

Wooo! Askbox open! I feel like I should send a celebratory ask but uh... I don't really have much to ask? I guess, since I've run into this problem doing my own thing can I ask for ideas on a new mom for the BlossomThorn kits? The reasons why she's unavailable are not particularly relevant, I just need at least a new mom for them, new dad optional.

Honestly? Briarlight.

This is definitely related to my own personal bone to pick with depictions of disability (particularly autism and neurological disability but I think it applies here too) but I think it's really underrepresented to show disabled characters being parents. ESPECIALLY good parents.

Loving and being loved, having a community that shows she can trust her friends and family to help her out, being able to explore what she has trouble with as a parent. Some people don't even know that it's possible for paraplegic people to conceive, have a healthy pregnancy, and give birth (though adoption would be fine as well!)

Plus! Briarlight feels like the sort of character who would love having kittens! It's not altering her at all to swap the kits over.

So that's my recommendation. I'm not sure who the partner would be though! I would invoke Queen's Rights but that's me and my little tricks. Could also have her adopt foundling kits.

But! If she's not what you're looking for, saving Hazeltail and letting her have kittens is great to have some fresh families around (and not destroy Daisy's whole nest). If you're very close to canon, Ferncloud is also kinda low, you could pick one of her descendants. I'm particularly fond of Toadstep as a den dad.

So, a woman in Massachusetts is suing a Crisis Pregnancy Center after they told her that her ectopic pregnancy was healthy and viable. She ended up having go get an emergency surgery to remove one of her fallopian tubes after she almost died from hemorrhaghing.

This is fucking insane.

A Whistle Stop Tour Of Birth

There are many unusual things you may experience during your pregnancy. The body goes through a lot of changes, which compels you to change your lifestyle. Butterbean covers the process of what actually happens during birth. From pregnancy to childbirth, learn everything here.

Website:

https://butterbean.uk/a-whistle-stop-tour-of-birth/

I'm writing a story and I'd like to how trans people get/treat STDs. If they haven't had bottom surgery is it no different than someone with those parts who is cis? But if they have, what differences are there? How about someone with no genitals?

In general it's pretty much the same as it would be for cis people. Bloodwork and a urine sample are the standard, and aren't really any different based on what someone's genitalia is like.

Pap smears and other sorts of exams can be dysphoria inducing as well, and there's some situation where it may be difficult to use a speculum because of atrophy (which can be for all sorts of reasons, hormones, vaginismus, imperforate hymen, intersex stuff). And people whose vaginas are surgically constructed don't typically have a cervix, so pap smears don't really get done as far as I know. (Sometimes speculums are used for other things though, like making sure everything is healing right, trimming or removing stitches from surgery, etc.)

But for the most part, the differences for STI testing specifically are mostly social, and can go different ways based on who is administering the test. Pap smears are in particular stressful for trans people who may have genitalia that's been altered by hormones. (I know it's irrational but the worry about getting a boner during a pap test, for instance, has crossed my mind a lot.)

Some other testing can be thrown for a loop because of the way procedure etiquette works. I had to have a transvaginal ultrasound once to check for ovarian cysts and there were definitely parts of it that were weird for me. (Transvaginal ultrasounds involve the ultrasound wand going inside the front hole for an accurate reading of specific parts of the reproductive system.) For instance, the ultrasound tech was a cis man and as part of their protocol, a cis woman nurse had to be in the room while I underwent this procedure. I hadn't asked about that ahead of time or really thought anything about it - I was in the emergency room trying to get to the bottom of extreme abdominal pain and I figured I could endure what I needed to. But in an ideal world, I'd be able to ask for a non cis person to be in the room with me I think. (I came in an ambulance, which would not take my partner with me.) (It turned out to be a 4mm kidney stone by the way, no ovarian cysts.)

Another anecdote that may be relevant to this topic is that sometimes doctors get weird about not knowing what you're testing for, because they don't know what body parts you have (and which were added at what points, made of what material). Prior to the transvaginal ultrasound, a doctor asked me what "chromosomes" I had. I honestly told him I did not know, I hadn't ever had a karyotype test as far as I knew. The doctor stumbled over himself a lot and I don't remember what else he said right after that, other than he was fumbling, got corrected, and that he was clearly Trying His Best. I interrupted the second or third useless question with, "are you asking if I have ovaries in case it might be a burst ovarian cyst or something?"

He was instantly relieved and said yes, so I told him.

There's a big problem I've noticed, that when people talk about these sorts of topics, they aren't specific enough in order to address what they mean. We use euphemisms like "assigned female" because people don't know that someone "assigned female" can have literally any body type. People seem afraid to name body parts, so they use euphemisms that rely on stereotypes and assumptions in order to be understood. But when you realize that people "assigned female" can be intersex, can have hysterectomies, can have testes, can have phalloplasties, and that everyone's parts are more or less analogous (skenes gland = prostate, etc), you realize how useless these broad categories are. If you want to ask if someone could carry a pregnancy, ask if they could carry a pregnancy. Not if they have certain chromosomes or were DFAB. Specifics matter. If I knew I was XY, that doctor would probably have assumed that the pattern of people with XY chromosomes not menstruating would include me. And if I did have ovarian cysts, or even a pregnancy, this could have dramatically impacted my health outcomes. (There have been stillbirths because of situations like this where people did not act fast enough because of ignorance around trans bodies.) I could have given in and guessed my chromosomes when the doctor asked, but what if my answer turned out to not be true? And what if the lack of confidence in my answer saved my life in some way?

I realize this is pretty far deviated from your original topic, but in terms of testing difficulties, it does feel like the sort of anecdote that would be very informative about these issues.

- mod nat

My story!

Heya, you may call me Charlie! Yes, I am pregnant, but no, this isn't a horny blog. I'm mainly here to talk about my experience, and hopefully find support and friends along the way.

As of making this post, I'm 16 years old (17 in December) and I'm 33 weeks pregnant (though due not long after my birthday). I've been mostly alone throughout the entire pregnancy because I haven't been able to speak much about it with anyone. Turns out most pregnancy communities I've encountered sexualize pregnancy, when I just want to be able to talk it normally. Being a teen has definitely made things a lot harder what with a lack of support, though I did finish school not long ago.

Please no NSFW of any kind, and if you do dm don't expect an answer. Anyone that gets too creepy will be blocked <3

Leslie Masicotte outlines key signs to pay attention to during & after pregnancy that may signal potential problems. Oh Sh*t: Identifying When You Need Help in Pregnancy and Labor.