Prenatal apt & monthly forum

I had my second checkup with my wonderful midwife, Sherri, last Thursday. We had another good hour long visit and talked about all kinds of things.

One of the things we talked about were using essential oils to solve some of my pregnancy symptoms right now. She actually sells DoTerra and gave me a little 3 pack of essential oils for free which was great and I've already used them a bunch. Peppermint, Lavender, and Lemon.
Peppermint - great for headaches (which Tara ps my midwife says is fine to use while pregnant)
Lavender - to help me sleep and STAY asleep better
Lemon - Rob's used on his cold sore; good for upset tummies/digestion
A few drops of all 3 in a capsule is supposed to be good for allergies which Rob has bad right now so I made him take it 2 times and we're not sure the effectiveness yet but we're willing to try!
Anyways it sounds like there are a million uses for even just these 3 she gave me alone! I know people who use these instead of medicines and I love the idea of having something safe and natural to use for me and my family. I'm definitely interested in learning more about them.
Here's a little chart of different uses of some of the essential oils:

One of the best things was hearing the baby's heartbeat and having Robby listen to it with me - he was so excited! "The baby's heartbeat's COOL mom!"

My blood pressure was normal this time which is good...

Weight - can we talk about the fact I've gained 13 lbs (+maybe a few more if you count vacation lbs that I'm choosing to not count) and I'm only 16 weeks. I was freaking out thinking I'd gained 5 lbs in a WEEK and calmed down a little when I realized it was over a month but still - with Robby I'd gained 0 by this point. I'm not sorry and I'll gain whatever lbs I need to and I feel like I'm eating when I'm hungry and not gorging on treats or anything so it is what it is. But I don't love it. Speaking of gaining weight and nutrition...

Sherri's Monthly Forum

Once a month Sherri gets all of her clients together and does a forum on a subject that's important to cover and then has couples who have just had their babies come and share their birth stories with the group. I know my nutrition isn't perfect but holy cow guys, it can get overwhelming thinking about all the stuff you should/could do.

We learned about the HOPE diet:

H- High Fiber - should be getting 30 grams a day, most people get like 8


O - Omega oils - can be found in flax, hemp, or chia seeds (were some we talked about); I'm taking high quality  fish oil pills Dr. Dummar gave me


P - Probiotics - plain yogurt, we didn't understand too much about them :)


E - Enzymes - help us digest our food, in raw fruits and veggies, can take supplements

There's a ton I could say but I'll just say the thing we are working on now is having a good, healthy green smoothie every morning with flax seed in it to help with fiber and omega... trying to eat more fruits and vegetables, raw foods...

Also, Sherri said by your 4th or 5th month of pregnancy you really should be OFF sugar! Did you hear that? OFF SUGAR! Wahh! Ok, I do see that the more fruits and veggies we eat the less we crave sweets - I haven't even wanted chocolate for days which is good - but I'm definitely not OFF sugar! And there are different levels of OFF sugar - like no treats, or not using any products with High Fructose Corn syrup or sugar in them which is pretty much everything besides raw foods. :) (like when I did the HCG diet) At least that diet helped me be much more aware of what has sugar in it and look for/make my own no sugar or low sugar options. So I'll be trying to cut sugar out of my diet more and more but I'm sure I won't be perfectly OFF sugar.

So I haven't been able to convince Rob to do an early ultrasound and now ours is only 16 days away so I guess I can wait... waiting is no fun! But that's ok. Gives me something to look forward to!!