Did you keep a pregnancy diary?

In our latest post for Pregnancy Month, Fran from The Parent Social talks about how she kept a record of her pregnancies, and how she's carrying them on as her children grow up:

I kept a pregnancy diary during both of my pregnancies.

Now I update them with an entry annually on the children’s’ birthdays, but whilst pregnant (from just a few days after first finding out) I wrote in them every single day. Some days I wrote pages and other days just a couple of sentences.

I enjoyed noting down all the happy little details about the events of the pregnancy and my experiences. However, the diaries also served as a channel for writing about my many worries and neuroses. They were also just somewhere to ‘discuss’ the silly stuff; the minutiae that I didn’t want to bore others with. It was really cathartic and it felt great to write down what I was feeling.

What I wrote about in my pregnancy diaries:

• Twinges, funny symptoms, odd little symptoms – were they normal?
• Milestones – first feeling the baby move, first seeing a limb poke out, first hearing the heartbeat, first bout of baby hiccups
• How much I missed alcohol
• What I was eating and not eating. How I missed eating certain things, how I was fantasising about eating the bloodiest steak post delivery!!
• Scans and appointments – how everything was progressing, how big the babies were, what they were doing on the scan
• My day-to-day life – how it had changed and how it hadn’t changed (did I mention that I missed alcohol?)
• Scary stuff like a worrying nuchal fold reading for one of my twins on a scan and my subsequent preoccupation

A couple of extracts:

“Bought another pregnancy test as I still don’t feel very pregnant. Positive again, so I think five tests is pretty conclusive.”

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“Friends over for poker night; an elaborate plan of drinking tonic water all night and passing it off as vodka tonic…”

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When I got home, I discovered that Matt had hired a Doppler. It was fantastic. We found the baby’s heartbeat almost straight away and it was as clear as a bell. Matt even managed to record it.”

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Emergency early scan: “The sonographer was focused on the screen and looked solemn. She stayed quiet for ages – it was worrying. She finally said: ‘Is there a history of twins in the family? We’ll you’re definitely pregnant.’ So, quite a shock.

I was immediately very happy that everything was fine but a bit shell-shocked and started thinking about the practicalities: would I cope, would I have to have a people carrier??”
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“Felt very energised today, which was good. I also got offered my first seat on the bus!”

Having a re-read is great. There are so many genuinely lovely and funny things to reminisce about during the pregnancies and I can really have a laugh at some of the things I wrote. However, I can also vividly recall all of my worries in an instant.

I’ll be handing the diaries over to the girls when they turn 18. I wonder what they’ll make of them…

How did you record your pregnancies? Did you keep a diary?

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Alexandra Phillips

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