Graceful Pathways ... : Pregnancy: Second Trimester Tips and Tricks

As promised a post on the second trimester.

Second Trimester tips and tricks.

Please remember that these are all things that worked for me but, may not work for you.

All medical and health advice should be run past your health care professional of choice.

So this is the trimester of real change. Your body starts to show others that your really on this journey and you will have a lot of decisions to make.

This trimester necessitated the buying of some new (to me) clothing. But, I was at a loss as to what I would really need. Sure there are all kinds of lists out there that tell you what you "must have", but I didn't have the budget or the fashion savvy to really get a lot of high end maternity stuff that I may or may not ever wear after this pregnancy.

My solution was to find a wonderful second hand maternity and baby store and learn a few tricks. I then picked up a short list of items to get me started. Then I picked up the rest of what I needed over time as I realized I needed them. I also continued to pull whatever I could from my previous closet for as long as I could.

My overall list at the end of the second and start of the third trimester looked like this.

Maternity clothing

Black sweater (second hand store)

Purple sweater (second hand store)

Green sweater (from previous closet)

Black cardigan (from previous closet)

Long sleeve white tee (Target maternity section)

Black v neck tee (borrowed from sister)

Black polo tee (second hand store)

Purple crew neck tee (second hand store)

Graphic tropical tee (second hand store)

Teal tunic tee (from previous closet)

Gray pattern tunic tee (from previous closet)

Multi colored tunic tee (from previous closet)

Black dress pants (second hand store)

Black leggings (Target, one size up from normal)

Maternity jeans (bought online Motherhood Maternity)

Teal print dress (from previous closet)

Sweat suit (already had as gift from husband)

Soft night shirt (already had as gift to self)

La Leche League nursing bras. One sleep, one not (bought on sale through Zulily)

6 pairs of large soft stretchy boy-short underwear (Walmart, originally bought for hiking)

The only thing I would not buy again is the black polo tee, I never wear it and it just hangs there sadly. I always think I'm going to like a polo shirt but never really wear them. Lesson learned going forward I guess. Biggest things I wish I had is a nice white button down, a little black dress, and maybe a green tee instead of the black polo. Oh and more underwear, it is hard to get to the end of the wash week with what I have.

The next big to do was figuring out some parenting decisions and setting up (one or more) registries.

For us we have made what I keep referring to as "the big three" parenting decisions early. To me the big three choices you must make are:

"Feeding Choice, Waste Management, Sleeping Arrangements."

Once these are made you can start deciding what you need for baby and where you want to get them.

Our personal decisions are that we want to try and go with:

Breastfeeding, Cloth/G Diapers, and (at first) a bassinet.

We ended up registering in two places for the convenance of other people.

We chose Amazon and Babies R Us.

While there are tons of lists and guides to help with figuring out what you need for baby and how much gear to get we found that we wanted minimal amounts of things and did not want a lot of stuff taking over our house and limited vehicle space when we travel. We also found lots of lists and lots of tips as we tried to condense things into a minimal amount of new baby stuff for a diaper bag as well.

So "our minimal" baby preparedness registry looks like this.