Fifteen years ago, little did I know my body was taking a hand in my fate. The husband and I had finally decided that NEXT year would be the year – we would start a family.
Ha.
My womb laughed in the face of my plans, smugly sniggering at its secret knowledge that a human bean was already nestled inside and growing nicely.
Of course – these were the days before the interwebs and the smart phones. In fact, these were the days before the mobile phones – I got my first mobile purely so that my 9 mile rural drive home wouldn’t be isolated and scary if my very old very knackered Vauxhall Chevrolet (called ‘George’) happened to die en route.
In those days, if you wanted to know about your pregnancy (and didn’t want to rely on the lurid sisterly tales of 36hr labours and gory births from your more experienced siblings) you hit the bookshop or the library. You read the baby magazines, and did what your midwife told you.
I remember so clearly cutting out a pack list from a magazine and tucking it into my ‘pregnancy folder’, carefully working through and ticking it off. I remember keeping an enormous ‘your pregnancy week-by-week’ hard back beside the bed, checking it every weekend, desperate to find out how big my baby bean had become, and what it had grown this week, what it could now see/hear/feel.
Of course, I made it through the pregnancy and birth like a gazillion women before me in the non-digital ages. But if I’d known that the endless repetitive itching of my hands and feet were a signal for something much more serious (obstetric cholestasis, which plagued all three of my subsequent pregnancies), I may have been a little more wary of going to term, a little keener to tell the midwife instead of brushing it off. As it was, everything turned out just fine – but OC was thought to carry a high risk of stillbirth, and the outcome of my labour (24hrs, forceps delivery, in case you were wondering) could have easily been so very different. Having that knowledge for subsequent pregnancies genuinely kept my babies safe. By my second pregnancy I was online, and researching for myself. I was on baby websites and chat forums, and all the information I needed was in my computer.
Oh how I envy today’s mums who carry that information in their pocket wherever they go, ready whenever the question arises that they need answering NOW. I wonder how much less midwives get called by panicking first time mothers now they have that wealth of knowledge at their finger tips?
Aptaclub have tapped in to this need of pregnant mothers to know everything that’s happening, and to plan and make lists and prepare. They’ve developed a FREE app to support pregnant mums in their third trimester of pregnancy, to prepare for labour and baby’s arrival. It has no less than SIX checklists to help you stay organised (and yes, you can totally personalise and edit them – scissors and marker pen no longer needed), and you can share them easily with your partner/sister/mother so they can join in with what to include within your hospital bag, shopping lists etc.
There is a ton of tips and practical advice to prepare for labour and birth, and when the time comes the app includes an easy-to-use contraction timer, and to finish up perfectly there’s a gorgeous personalised birth announcer with a range of templates, so you can start shouting the news from your hospital bed rather than letting your partner stand outside in the January rain and call 45 people in turn to repeat “It’s a boy! 7lb 9oz! yes, they’re both fine!” 45 times. *cough*
Bloggers – Aptaclub have joined up with us to run a writing comp, with a gernormous £1300 prize pot of Amazon Vouchers. Step this way to Read All About It, and find out how to enter for yourself…
