Pregnancy is an epic time in a woman’s life—especially with a first pregnancy.  With all the advice and recommendations from well-meaning friends and family, remember this is your pregnancy and it will be unique to who you are. Don’t get caught up in comparing your experience to those of your friends.  Though pregnancy can be difficult at times and you may not always be feeling your best, find ways to enjoy this special time and prepare for your sweet baby. Here are a few tips to help you find your groove and enjoy your pregnancy:

Capture the Memories.  Book a pregnancy photographer and have maternity shots taken (6 months is a great time to do this) and start a pregnancy journal or blog (you can turn your blog into a book later for your child). Document your feelings, fears, excitement, and the changes you’re going through.  Although the 9 months sometimes seems to go on forever, the time does go fast and before you know it pregnancy will be a distant memory.

Enjoy the Preparations.  Have fun shopping and prepping for your baby and your baby’s room.  Involve your friends and family and let them give you a hand.  Enjoy this time with your partner and consider a “baby moon” getaway before the baby arrives.

Take Time for Yourself.  Soon enough, your time will be divided by your many new responsibilities.  So while you can, focus on yourself and this special time in your life.  Try and fit in exercise as it helps keep you healthy and reduces stress.  Try a pregnancy yoga class and meet other soon-to-be moms, or book a pregnancy massage.

You’re the Expert of Your Pregnancy.  Once pregnant, everybody seems to have something to say about what you should or should not do with yourself and your baby.  So, while getting advice from friends, family and experts can help you along the way, keep in mind you need to do what’s best for you.  Take the advice that makes sense to you and take the rest with a grain of salt.  This will ultimately leave you happier and less stressed.

Give Up Unrealistic Expectations Now.  Preparing mentally and having realistic expectations is the first step toward enjoying your pregnancy.  Let go of how you “think” your pregnancy should be and how you “should” be as a parent.  Once you realize that so much of this is out of your hands, you’ll find yourself enjoying your pregnancy more.

Keep Track of Records From Your Doctor Visits. Use information from your doctor visits and any records they provide as they will give you plenty of material to start your baby book.  Many moms enjoy scrapbooking and blogging about their pregnancy and birth experience to share with their family and children when they get older.  Kids love to hear about their birth story and see pictures of mommy and with them even before they were born.  This also helps increase the bond between moms and kids.

Make this time special and create your own fairytale experience!

About Jennifer Chung & Kinsights:
Jennifer Chung is a parenting expert and co-founder of Kinsights.com: part parenting community, part online health record. Kinsights provides parents with a safe place to seek answers to their questions while also helping them track their child’s health information. Organize your child’s growth and developmental milestones, immunizations, medications, allergies, and more.  Connect with Kinsights at https://kinsights.com to learn more and sign-up! You can also follow them on Facebook and Twitter (@kinsights).

The post Easy Ways to Find Your Pregnancy Groove appeared first on AKAMom Magazine.

If you find yourself in this situation, it may be a tough pill to swallow, but the good news is that with major advances in modern fertility technology, the donor egg IVF process has never been so effective or affordable.

Pick Yourself Up

Upon receiving the news that you aren’t likely to get pregnant using your own eggs, it’s only natural that you may not want to accept it right away. It is essential to take all the time that you need to get used to the idea. So be angry. Be mad at the world. You have every right, because you know what? Life is unfair.

Scream, shout, cry; try therapy if it helps. Take your time to process your emotions, and then, when you’re ready, pick yourself up and fight this battle head on. Don’t let infertility win. It’s time to look at the facts.

Consider Your Options

If you’re married or living with your significant other, this can be a very taxing time in your relationship and it’s important that both of you are on board with whatever decision you make. For some couples, it makes sense to adopt, while others can’t face the idea of going through such a lengthy process without even the guarantee of a successful outcome. Cases of mothers changing their minds at the last minute after giving birth are abundant, and the emotional strain can be too much to bear.

While the option of using a donor egg for procreation has been around for over thirty years and is now a fairly standard procedure, you may find yourself struggling with the idea that your child will not physically share your genes. However, using a donor egg still allows you to experience being pregnant; carrying your child in your womb for nine months and feeling him or her kick and hiccup inside you. The maternal bond is the strongest in the world and begins between a mother and child long before birth.

Using Frozen Donor Eggs

If you’ve decided that trying donor egg treatment is the best option for you, you still may have run into various obstacles. After all, not everyone has the finances for this fairly expensive treatment, or the time required to synchronize the menstrual cycle of the egg donor and recipient as required with a fresh donor cycle. That’s where frozen donor eggs come in.

In the last few years, major technological advancements in the field of vitrification (a flash-freezing technique used to freeze eggs) mean that access to this ground-breaking fertility treatment has not only become more widespread, convenient, and economically viable; but the chances of success are now higher than ever before.

Vitrification minimizes the possibility that ice crystals will form in the eggs, which often happened with slow-freeze methods. Due to new and improved methods of freezing and advances in thawing protocols, the chances of thawed egg viability and survival are now much higher. This means that the chances of frozen donor eggs leading to a healthy pregnancy and birth are also higher. Currently, the chances of success from using frozen donor eggs are almost as high as that of using fresh donor eggs in the United States.

Benefits of Frozen Donor Eggs

As with any major decision, you should weigh the pros and cons of all treatments. Bear in mind that using frozen eggs instead of fresh eggs still has a slightly lower success rate, and you will need to consider this against other factors, such as cost, convenience and increased availability and choice. But to give you an idea, the main benefits of using frozen donor eggs over fresh ones are:

• You no longer have to spend the time or high amounts of medication needed to synchronize your cycle with that of the egg donor
• Any complexities related to ovarian stimulation for the donor or problems that arise from stimulation have already been taken care of; the eggs are fully ready for fertilization
• Once you have chosen your donor, embryo transfer can begin quickly, and on your schedule
• Costs for each treatment cycle are lower using frozen donor eggs than fresh eggs
• You have greater selection as you are no longer limited to finding someone local or available

Keep in mind that a fresh egg donor cycle could run upwards of $28,000, (including agency fee, medication and IVF). Whereas using frozen donor eggs can be as much as half that price, with some donor egg companies even offering financing plans and a full refund if you aren’t successful after a given number of cycles.

While no one can make up your mind for you, it should be of some comfort to know that you have many options available to you and a real, viable chance of becoming a mother. So don’t let infertility win – consider frozen donor eggs.

The post Don’t Let Infertility Win – Consider Frozen Donor Eggs appeared first on AKAMom Magazine.