“Pre-Birth Milestones to Track”

The nine months leading up to birth are the first interactions you have with your new baby, and whether it’s your first pregnancy or your fifth, each pregnancy you experience will have unique facets to it.

Utilizing an online baby journal, joining a forum and staying active or online birthing classes that help you keep track and understand pregnancy stages are great ways to document your pregnancy experience, and allows you to look back over each pregnancy and see how much your body, mind and life changed throughout it.

As you document your pregnancy, keep an eye out for these different pre-birth milestones to track.

Month to Month

Each month in pregnancy represents a new milestone throughout the process that deserves its own recognition. Taking that first positive test brings about a whirlwind of changes to your body that aren’t yet discernible to the naked eye, and every month after brings you one step closer to holding your newest family member. Tracking how much your body has changed month by month through pictures is a great way to preserve the pregnancy.

The First Time You Hear the Heartbeat

While you know your pregnancy is real the first time you see a positive test, it’s hard to really grasp that your body is forming a human when you can’t see or feel anything. Hearing the heartbeat for the first time brings an entirely new dimension to pregnancy – one that’s worth noting. You can never be entirely prepared for the wave of emotion that overtakes you when you hear those beats that signify your baby is alive and well for the first time.

Feeling Flutters

Unless you own a Doppler, you’ll only be able to hear the baby’s heartbeat at your prenatal visits – something that can be terrifying for new moms who want constant confirmation that their baby is OK. Those first few flutters, which have been described as everything from the fluttering of a butterfly to bubbles popping, are the first real indication of movement you have, and are an entirely foreign and delightful experience that confirms your little one is growing and thriving.

When Your Partner First Felt the Baby Move

There’s a lot to be said about the patience of your partner throughout pregnancy. After all, you are the one experiencing the changes in your body, and he is essentially in the dark about what’s really happening. The first time he feels the baby kick is the first time he gets to really put a physical feeling to the life that he helped create, and that is a moment worth preserving.

Finding Out the Gender

From if you’re carrying high or low to how fast the baby’s heartbeat is, everyone will have a guess as to if your little baby is going to be a boy or a girl. Actually hearing “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” for the first time, however, is life changing. From that moment forward, your baby isn’t just a baby, but is a definitive person, and you are finally able to give the baby a name and imagine what he or she will be like.

How Your Life Has Changed… And How it Hasn’t!

There’s a lot to be said for how much your life changes during pregnancy. Are you tired all the time? Were you nauseous during the first trimester? Did you feel great throughout? Were you able to stay active? Which foods did you love… and which ones did you hate? But there are a lot of things that stay the same, too. Noting what’s changed in your life and what hasn’t is a fun way to see the effects that pregnancy has on your body and mind, and also how much was a permanent side effect of pregnancy and how much went back to normal after birth.

Having an online journal allows you to track all of these exciting pre-birth milestones and more, and provides you with a great way to look back on your pregnancy and remember all the highs (and sometimes the lows!) that accompanied it. In the years to come, it will also be fun for your child to look back and see how life was in the months leading up to his or her birth.

Thanks to Teresa Blecher, Kidmondo.com