r/BabyBumps

So my husband and I are having our first child. Recently, my sibling became engaged to someone with a child. This child is calling my parents "Papa and Gigi." My parents talked in length about what they wanted to be called as grandparents. When I found out we were having a baby, my husband and I reached out to his parents to let them know what my parents would be called and asked them to think about their grandparents' names. My husbands mom became upset and said she wanted Gigi. My mom talked to her around the baby shower and said she could also be Gigi if she wanted. Well, everyone was in for the baby shower, and my husband's parents told everyone they would be called "Papa and Gigi." this is the first grandkid on their side, and my parents can't change their name now. So now my child will have "Papa and Gigi" on both sides. Am I wrong to think this is absolutely asinine? For example, if she wants to be Gigi, then be "Gigi and Grandpa" or any other 1000 grandparent names you can choose from.

Or at least, not that bad. It wasn't as bad as I remembered with my first pregnancy.

Later I realized I had taken a zinc lozenge to fight a cold and my taste buds were suppressed and whack. So if you want to try and diminish the nasty taste of the glucose drink, have a zinc lozenge in the morning. You won't be able to taste anything properly so it will go down easy.

Is this a good idea haha? I’m 31, a FTM due in December and we would be going around 26 weeks at the end of September. We have a wedding near Hershey, PA at the end of that week and thought we could do a couple of days in NYC and then take the train to PA, since NYC is the closest and combining trips just makes sense to me. I’ve been to NYC before, but I was almost 10 years younger and had a ton of energy. It sounds so fun to explore the city and eat, visit museums, maybe see a show, but I’m wondering if I’m biting off more than I can chew. My husband thinks CT could be more relaxing, it would just be more of a trek to get to PA after.

16 weeks and I have an early morning OB appointment and my body woke me up 3 hours before I needed to wake up. Literally got 3 hours of sleep and tried falling back to sleep but my body won’t let me 😭😭. This always happens before any appointments where I just cannot sleep well the night before. Anyone else?

I messaged my mom about it and she guilt tripped me saying I need to sleep for baby’s sake. Like no shitttt that doesn’t help 😟

This is our last baby and I would love to be team green this time around. Has anyone successfully done this?

I get excited thinking about how fun it will be in the delivery room, but then I worry about someone slipping up and not respecting the suprise.

Has anyone successfully done this? How did you talk to your doctor about it? How did you avoid the gender when you did the NIPT? Or is it too far fetched to expect every nurse and ultrasound tech to not slip?

So I’m pregnant with my first, still pretty early on. First trimester. Had doctor’s appointments and things are going well so far. I know sex is safe during pregnancy, my husband knows sex is safe during pregnancy, doctor has told me sex is perfectly fine but for some reason when it comes down to it, I get nervous. My husband and I are still intimate in other ways but for some reason I get in my head. Anyone else feel like this or am I just a little crazy lol I’m sure this will pass but for now it’s just so annoying lol

Hi, FTM here, 24w

I started working at this company recently, but I never told them I was pregnant, bc I wfh and I was scared I would be fired/not taken into consideration. I decided to take two weeks off at the end of July before officially starting my maternity leave in August (I'm due at the beginning of September). I've been there for two months and I am still in training. I had asked HR how vacation and maternity leave works as my jobs pro-rates your vacation days on the first year of employment and they told me it would be wiser to use those weeks before going on leave as they could not be passed over onto the next. I needed also all my other PTO anyway for OB appointments. Anyways, I asked this was a while ago, but my boss scheduled a one on one meeting today with me and it's not the first time she does that, but I was wondering if I should tell her honestly that I am pregnant if she brings up my PTO... she could also just meet me how everything is going as she has done in the past, but I am conflicting and stressed. I have my 600h for employmenr insurrance/maternity even if they were to fire me, but I'm still so scared 🥹 If she doesn't bring it up, I was planning on telling her either next week or the first week of June. What should I do....?

I(27f) had HG my first pregnancy with my son(2m) it made me absolutely scared to get pregnant again, i sucked it up because i really want my son to have a sibling. I am currently 6 weeks pregnant. Have only thrown up a couple of times, and so shocked at how hungry i am this time around.
Now i know every pregnancy is different, but i cant help but feel hope that maybe this pregnancy will be enjoyable. I have only thrown up at least 2x and just get nauseous in the mornings without actually throwing up. And honestly its glorious! Is this what normal morning sickness feels like? Because mann i would take this over throwing up so much i need iv tranfusions 3x a week just to keep me and my baby nutriented enough when i couldnt keep anything down. And no medication helped.

Did anyone else have it with their first pregnancy? And not their second?

Honestly, before this, I never really cared about having parent friends because that just… wasn’t my world. My social circle has always been creatives, academics, artists, queer people, alternative people etc (mostly childfree or childless by choice). I’ve never been someone who naturally gravitates toward kids, playgroups, “mum culture,” or the whole lifestyle that seems to come with parenting. I don’t dislike children in a cruel way, I just never felt drawn to that world. I know I’ll love my own child deeply, but I still don’t suddenly feel like a “kids person.”

Now that I’m pregnant, I feel like everyone around me expects this instant transformation into a very specific kind of woman. My family keep asking things like “When’s the baby shower?” and talking as if I should suddenly have this huge network of excited mum friends organising things for me. But the truth is… I don’t.

My existing friends aren’t being horrible at all, but they also don’t seem especially involved or emotionally invested in the pregnancy. I understand why… it’s not really relevant to their lives and they don’t have experience with it. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt a bit. I’m scared we’re going to drift apart as my life changes.

At the same time, I also feel resistant to fully immersing myself in stereotypical parenting spaces because I don’t feel like I belong there either. I don’t want to lose the parts of myself that existed before pregnancy. I still want to be “me,” not become consumed by “mum identity.” But I also know realistically I’ll probably need some new connections and support from people who understand this stage of life.

I guess I’m struggling with feeling “between worlds”…not fully fitting into childfree life anymore, but not naturally fitting into traditional mum culture either.

Has anyone else experienced this? Did you eventually find your people? How did you maintain your identity and friendships while also adapting to parenthood?

first time pregnant, 33F, I had my first scan at 6 wks and US measured 5 weeks. Since there was no fetal pole then and had a yolk sac with 5.5 mm diameter and gestational sac noted about 10.2 mm, doctor asked to come back in 2 weeks. After 2 weeks, a fetal pole of 2.1 mm was noted with a gestational sac of about 32mm, but no heartbeat was detected. For 8 weeks pregnancy, CRL noted about 5 weeks 1 D, establishing it as a growth lag of 3 weeks. I am keeping all options open. But want to understand from fam here: 1) Should I wait for one more week and hope for a heartbeat? 2) Even if the heartbeat appears, is it safe to carry along, or is it a case of MMC for me, unfortunately, and accept it as I am crying my heart out right now. Appreciate your experiences and inputs.

My husband and I are looking at options for when we go back to work. We're in the US so I get my unpaid 12 weeks off (or some pay with potential short term disability) and he gets 4 weeks paid. We were thinking of him going back to work right away and I tough it out by myself for those 12 weeks, then he takes his 4 weeks when I go back. Although we would nix this plan if I end up needing a c-section.

After that we have his parents but I have a strained relationship with them. We also have two dogs and they're secretly afraid of dogs. They don't know how to tell a dog no, out of fear of retaliation, although our dogs have never given them a reason to be fearful. I just have a hard time trusting them with two dogs and an infant at the same time - I think someone would end up neglected. Or god forbid they misread the dogs' body language and something happens with the baby. (My mom is dead and my dad lives in an rv which doesn't support a car seat, so no help there)

There's a daycare in our area that we'd get priority enrollment at. It's $36,900/year for infants and toddlers and the baby would be 8 months at the time of enrollment.

We've also considered looking in the area for a responsible college student or recent college grad who could nanny but we worked out that cost to be roughly $42,000/year if we paid lower on the scale at $18/hour. I'd feel a little guilty not being able to offer the more generous $25/hour like a lot of families do.

Does anyone have any advice? Are nannies more beneficial than daycare? Is it worth biting the bullet with my in laws?

Husband here.

My wife and I saw the arrival of our newborn last week. Everyone is doing great and my wife is absolutely crushing being a new mother.

During the pregnancy she developed some pretty serious snoring. Enough that I had to go into the spare bedroom the last trimester. She had a LITTLE bit of snoring before the pregnancy, but nothing crazy.

Now that the baby is here, I moved back into our main bedroom (for obvious reasons). Her snoring continues to persist. I know it's only been a week, but is this something I can expect to improve as she heals?

My sleep deprevation at this point is more to do with her snoring than the actual baby. I'm doing everything I can to support here and would like a little bit of hope that the snoring will go away.

I appreciate any insight!

Is the transition from 1 to 2 kids as hard as people say?? I know there’s so many contributing factors to this including age gap, so im looking to hear all perspectives! My 1st is 14 months and I feel like I’m close to ready to try for #2.

So I've been going back and forth on this for weeks and I'm no closer to a decision so I figured I'd just ask here.

We have a small bedroom and I want the baby close to me at night, at least for the first few months. I had some abdominal surgery before this pregnancy and I'm genuinely nervous about how much getting in and out of bed I can manage in those early weeks, so I've been leaning toward a bedside sleeper with adjustable height rather than a standalone bassinet. The Arm's Reach co-sleeper keeps coming up when I look into this but I keep reading about people struggling with the gap between it and their mattress and I can't figure out if that's a real problem or just a few unlucky people.

My husband wants the Snoo smart sleeper and honestly I looked into it and I understand why like it responds to crying automatically. But $1,700 is a lot to spend when I don't know what kind of sleeper this baby will be and I've seen enough posts from people whose babies just didn't take to it that I'm nervous to commit. The rental is more manageable but even that adds up fast.

I looked at the 4Moms Mamaroo Sleep Bassinet too but the reviews put me off a bit, seems like some babies love it and some refuse it and the actual usable period before they hit the height limit can be pretty short regardless.

Right now I'm looking most seriously at the Baby delight beside me dreamer. It's a bedside sleeper, adjustable height, mesh sides, not trying to do too much. Feels like the sensible option. But I keep sitting with this nagging feeling that I'm going to be up at 3am wishing I had something with motion features.

I also got briefly obsessed with finding something greengaurd Gold certified because we're in an older apartment and I've been anxious about off-gassing. I think I might be overthinking that one.

Has anyone used the Arm's Reach and found the gap thing was actually fine? Or gone with something simple and felt okay about it? I have 10 weeks and I need to just pick something.

I had HG during my 1st trimester and at one point my obgyn's office suggested that I check into the hospital to access more immediate care. I thought that I would get treatment for HG (such as IV fluids) but instead had a traumatizing experience that's really shaken my confidence surrounding birth.

The whole story is longer and I don't want to share potentially identifying details, but in summary, there was major miscommunication where I started being treated as a psych patient instead of a gynecologic patient. For context, I am autistic and I think this significantly affected the care I received. I was confused by some of the questions they asked and nurses flagged me as a mental health risk, even though I was not suicidal. I repeatedly tried to communicate this but nobody would believe me and they seemed to get agitated whenever I disagreed that I was a suicide risk. I requested my medical records after being discharged and saw that they had noted things like avoiding eye contact and unusual tone of voice (which are autistic traits) as evidence that I was suspicious.

I was not allowed to leave the hospital, all my personal items were confiscated by security, and I was explicitly not allowed any privacy (I refused to shower as a result). I repeatedly tried to ask for an explanation of my legal rights or a patient advocate, but no one involved would answer my questions or get me in touch with anyone who could, simply insisting that everything that was happening was legal and appropriate and thus no one would help me. I eventually stopped asking about my rights because I sensed that they were perceiving it as further evidence of poor mental health. One nurse scolded my husband and told him it was irresponsible to have sex with me because being pregnant would push me over the edge. Abortion was brought up a few times and I felt a bit judged for refusing.

In particular, there was a psychiatrist who insisted that I was "a danger to the community" as soon as she entered the room, without having actually talked to me before that. I had told nurses that I was afraid because I had past medical trauma and she repeatedly brought this up as evidence that I was an extremely unstable person, implicitly suggesting that I must have warranted those past experiences. She declared that I would certainly have increasingly frequent and more intense mental breakdowns and only get worse over time, never better. She also cited the fact that I did not have an outpatient psychiatrist as evidence of my danger even though I didn't have one because I didn't have any need for psychiatric medication, and declared that very few people would be willing to take me on as a patient. My husband asked her to please speak to me more kindly because I was scared and she refused on the grounds that her judgment as a professional was accurate.

I was eventually allowed to be discharged after 2 days after CNAs, my regular talk therapist, and a 3rd party psychiatrist advocated that I have not exhibited any suicidal behavior. My therapist disclosed to me that when she was trying to talk the hospital psychiatrist down, they were considering having me involuntarily committed for weeks and had thought my husband was abusive because he was trying to advocate for more comfortable conditions and disagreeing with them involuntarily holding me.

I have reported the experience to my obgyn and thankfully the doctors there were horrified and affirmed that this was not what they had in mind when they referred me, and said that they would report the incident. They also said that they'd try to modify my health records to clarify things although I'm still feeling worried that this incident will somehow come back to affect my care, since having a history of mental health treatment (especially involuntarily) is stigmatizing.

Overall though, this has given me a ton of fear about what will happen when I give birth... I've always heard that a woman is allowed to refuse treatments she doesn't want, but in this case, nobody listened to my clear and repeated lack of consent because they had designated me as too unstable to make my own decisions. It was incredibly scary to not be allowed to leave, and I know that's only supposed to happen if you're in danger, but in this case I wasn't suicidal (or even capable of harming myself since I was so sick) and it still happened... I feel afraid to ask questions or disclose worries in the future because it was used against me during this situation. I also scared that I might be judged as an unfit parent because of my autism and that someone may try to separate me from the baby. I did not have depression at the time this happened (I was just suffering from HG) but now I also feel uneasy about reaching out if I do end up developing PPD.

Has anyone else been through this? Does anyone know what my rights would be during the birth and how I can try to avoid this type of situation? I will be hiring a doula to help but I'm still really scared. This is in the USA

Hi, I’m 28 weeks with my second pregnancy and I’ve had such bad anxiety this time around. Mostly health anxiety. I think it’s been caused partly by Instagram as my algorithm was full of posts about what not to do in pregnancy - one post about not handling receipt paper due to the BPA made me spiral as I work with thermal shipping labels all day at work.

I’ve now deleted Instagram, I’m seeing a therapist and doing yoga and meditation regularly which helps in the moment, but I’m wondering, does anyone have any tips on how to deal with the anxiety when it pops up? I’m just not enjoying this pregnancy, worrying I’ve harmed my baby, which makes me so sad.

Also, everyone keeps telling me that my stress is bad for the baby, which makes me feel worse because I’m now stressed about being stressed! Has anyone had a stressful/anxious pregnancy and everything be ok?

AITA. My husband thinks I’m being too sensitive and I sometimes feel like maybe I am. I’m just so offended by some of the things people have to said to me while pregnant. As a bit of a background, I’m currently in my third trimester. Not the first pregnancy, but the furthest along. I had a miscarriage 2 years ago. And then with this pregnancy - it was a twin pregnancy, but miscarried one before 12 weeks. The second twin is going well so far! Fingers crossed! However it’s been absolutely wild about some of the things people have said to me. And I want to know if I should let it go (and how?) or if it’s something I can genuinely be mad about. 

1. Why didn’t you ask the doctor why you miscarried. Once you’re pregnant you’re pregnant. You should do some tests.
2. Yes I’ve seen many miscarriages back in my day, women with bloody foetuses. (This is from the same woman as #1)
3. Oh I’m so sorry you had a miscarriage. I’ve had 2 abortions so I know how you feel. 
4. You’re looking fat today.
5. Are you well? Oh good. How much weight have you gained?
6. (This is from my MIL who knows our full background. Has not congratulated us at any point. Has not asked how we're doing/feeling. Just busy telling everyone who will listen she's going to be a grandma. Mind you, I have minimal contact with her so the first time I saw her since being pregnant was in the 2nd Trimester, and all she said was this) Hi, I only have one thing to say. When I had my child, I had the best and easiest pregnancy and delivery. It was so easy. Easiest thing in the world.

I don’t even know how to start this because my emotions are genuinely all over the place right now.

I’m 25 years old, in nursing school, broke, living at home, and I just found out I’m pregnant. I took another test tonight and it was positive again. This is real. And instead of feeling one clear emotion, I feel like I’m being ripped in two directions at the same time.

I am terrified. Like genuinely terrified.

But at the same time… I think I want this baby.

And that’s the part nobody around me seems to understand.

Everyone keeps talking to me like keeping the pregnancy would automatically destroy my life. Like I’m throwing everything away if I go through with it. People keep bringing up school, money, the fact that I’ve only been with my boyfriend for 5 months, how hard it’ll be, how stressed I’ll be, how I’m “not ready.” And logically I hear all of that. I do. I’m not delusional about how difficult this could be.

But emotionally? Something changed the second this stopped being hypothetical.

Before this happened, I always thought I knew exactly what I would do if I accidentally got pregnant. I used to say I wouldn’t keep it. I really believed that at the time. But now that I’m actually here, now that there’s an actual pregnancy and not just a random hypothetical situation, I feel completely different than I expected to.

And honestly I feel guilty even admitting that because everyone around me is acting like wanting this means I’m irresponsible or stupid or ruining my future.

I keep going back and forth between feeling attached already and then immediately panicking about how I would afford anything, how I’d finish nursing school, whether my relationship is even stable enough, whether my family would judge me forever, whether I’d completely lose myself. One second I’m imagining a future with this baby and the next second I feel like I can’t breathe from fear.

I think what hurts the most is feeling like nobody is allowing me to feel anything except panic. Like the second I say “I think I want to keep it,” people immediately start talking about everything that could go wrong instead of understanding why this is emotionally so hard.

I know having a baby right now would change my life. I’m not naive about that. But I also don’t know if I can ignore the fact that deep down, despite being scared out of my mind, part of me really wants this.

I guess I just need to hear from people who have actually been in this situation. Did anyone else unexpectedly end up wanting their baby even when the timing was terrible? Did your life completely fall apart like everyone says it will? Were you able to finish school and still become yourself afterward?

Please just be kind. I already feel emotional enough and I honestly just need support right now.

Can't stand plain water, or diet soda. Probably shouldn't keep having a Sonic slushie every day.

What's everyone driving 😂

I just had an amazing birth experience for my second baby - contractions started light around 1pm, were really picking up by 7pm, went to the hospital at 10pm and I was already 8cm upon admittance, pushed out baby at 1am unmedicated and according to my birth plan.

All that said, I hired a doula to support me and had been texting her since about 3pm. She knew it was second baby and things could move faster. But she continued to tell that things could take a long time and to try not to time contractions and get rest. At 8pm she told me to take two Tylenol PM or drink a glass of wine and try to go to sleep. I knew I wouldn’t be doing that as my body was gearing up and there was no way I’d be able to fall asleep and did not want to put anything in my body. I told her we were heading the hospital at 10pm and she said ok but if you are less than 4cm then to go back home. Of course when I got there and was 8cm 90% effaced my husband called her and she did come in while I was still laboring and did a great job getting hands on right away and supporting me through.

I guess I’m looking for validation for feeling a bit gaslit by the lack of support. She is a respected and highly reviewed doula in my area and other than those few hours (arguably some of the most important?) I did have a good experience with her. Has this kind of thing happened to anyone else?