Pre-Pregnancy To Do List

A long time ago I was inspired by the following blog... Baby Makin(g) Machine as she wrote about the quest to pretty much research everything imaginable regarding babies. She worked hard to not only bring herself up to speed on current trends, tips, and tricks, but also health. So after reading her blog for over two years, I'm finally on that path myself.

Now that we have our house to ourselves again, Chris managed to surprise me by suddenly being gung-ho on us getting pregnant this summer. So the process begins and I am developing list of things to do regarding the pregnancy and things i want to do before this pregnancy:

1. Get into my doctor regarding stopping my BC pills and pre-pregnancy counseling. Now you would think this one would be easy right? Finish the pack and then BAM no more pills. It would be that easy except I have PMDD. My doctor also wants me to stop taking my BC pills three months before we are officially trying to get pregnant because I have been on HBC for YEARS. While some research says that you can stop HBC and be pregnant the next month, we have figured that it couldn't hurt stopping earlier. By the looks of my school calendar hopefully I can get into the doctor in March or June. Otherwise I'll have to use a 4th day from my vacation this year and I'm attempting to avoid using as many days as I can.

2. Research Pre-Natals. I absolutely hate taking pills. I have no problem with advil, tylonol, bc, and things of that sort. Vitamins however are another story. They are typically large, and if they have iron in them then I usually end up with an upset stomach. So I want to find a chewable vitamin that a) Taste good, and b) actually satisfies the levels that my doctor wants me to take. There are quite a few pre-natals out there that clearly leave out various vitamins that they should have in them so I have to be careful about this one. I have been taking folic acid for the past two years, but I need to find a new method because my current folic acid vitamin is included in my HBC.

3. Pay off my student loans: Luckily we have been in a pretty good financial situation since we both started working our current jobs and we've paid down my student loans by two years. If we keep paying on them as we are, then they should be paid off completely by August. Earlier if we use things like our tax refund and my summer school pay. This one is totally do-able but it would be great to have it done earlier than we have planned.

4. Plan a vacation for this sumer: This year will be our 9th anniversary since our first date! Next year will mark our big 10th anniversary and awhile back we talked about doing something big for that anniversary. Plans have since changed and since we are hoping to have a baby by our 2013 anniversary, we decided to have a big celebration trip this year instead. Chris is heading this project while I research up on our other project so I am excited to see what he plans for us.

As I think of more things for this list then I'll expand it.