Pregnancy Prep: Your To-Do List For When You"re Due

 

Whether you are planning on becoming pregnant or in the early stages of pregnancy, you need to be aware of a few things that need to be done to prepare for a new baby. Buying clothes and furniture is important, but there are some common sense tasks you can perform to ensure a healthy pregnancy and give your baby a great start in life.

 

See Your Doctor

A good check-up is important at any time in your life, but it is vitally important prior to and in the early stages of pregnancy. If you are in the early stages of pregnancy, your health care provider will help you identify lifestyle changes or medications that you need to adjust during your pregnancy. The sooner you get checked out and become your very healthiest, the better chances you will have of having a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby.

 

See Your Dentist

Dental health influences your entire body. Get a good dental check-up now. Expectant mothers who have gum or dental disease tend to have smaller babies or premature babies. So get those dental problems dealt with now for a healthier you and a healthier baby.

 

Behaviors to Stop

Now is the time to quit smoking and drinking. Alcohol and smoking can keep you from becoming pregnant. They are also an important factor in causing miscarriages. Be honest with your healthcare provider. He or she will be happy to help you stop any addictive behavior and become healthier. Your healthcare provider may also have you quit drinking caffeine. Excess caffeine use can lead to infertility and increase your risk of having a miscarriage. It’s best to abstain from any harmful substance during pregnancy, for your own health and that of your baby.

 

Behaviors to Start

Sometimes we need a good reason to give up bad habits and start good ones. A new baby is the right reason to start some good habits. You may even continue these healthy habits after the baby is born. Some of the basic good behaviors you will want to start before and during your pregnancy are:

•Eat healthy foods. Concentrate on eating lean protein, fruit and vegetables. Your healthcare specialist may also recommend taking prenatal supplements, such as those offered by Nature’s Energy, to make sure you’re getting the right vitamins and minerals.

•Lose excess weight. If you eat healthy and exercise, excess weight should come off naturally. Make sure you consult with your doctor before starting any exercise program to decide how much exertion you can handle.

 

The Most Important Thing to Do

The most important thing to do is to listen to your healthcare provider’s advice. He or she will guide you through your pregnancy to bring a new baby into the world.

 

Categories: due, pregnancy prep, To Do List

New Year’s Stressolutions: How to Unwind in 2014

What New Year’s resolutions did you set this year? Maybe you decided to lose weight, or perhaps protecting your health against smoking habit was on the agenda – but what about stress? Did you resolve to be less stressed in 2014, or is the idea of making resolutions too stressful to even contemplate? Stress doesn’t only play a part in your corporate wellness; it impacts every aspect of your wellbeing, but how do you achieve the seemingly impossible goal of reducing stress?

 

There are many ways of coping with stress, but some are less healthy than others. Unhealthy ways for managing stress include smoking, drinking too much, over or under eating, zoning out for hours in front of the television or computer, withdrawing from friends or family, using medication or drugs to relax, sleeping too much, procrastinating, filling up your day to avoid facing problems, and taking your stress out on others by lashing out. If that sounds all-too familiar, let’s take a look at healthy ways to manage your stress:

 

1. Avoid unnecessary stress. Rachel Clements, BSc Hons, M Psych, MAPS, co-founder and Director of Psychological Services and Principal Organisational Psychologist at the Centre for Corporate Health, you need to learn how to say “no.” Clements urges, ‘Know your limits and stick to them. Taking on more than you can handle is a sure-fire recipe for stress, so be realistic in your personal capacity.’ The same goes for people who stress you out. Clements advises, ‘If someone consistently causes stress in your life and you can’t turn the relationship around, limit the amount of time your spend with that person or end the relationship.’

 

2. Reduce your to-do list: ‘Look at your schedule, responsibilities and daily tasks,’ Clements instructs. ‘If you have too much on your plate, distinguish between the “musts”, the “shoulds” and the most urgent. Drop the tasks that aren’t a priority to the bottom of the list or eliminate, delegate or delay doing them.’

 

3. Change the situation: Clements recommends, ‘Express your feelings instead of bottling them up. If something or someone is bothering you, communicate your concerns in an open and respectful way. If you don’t voice your feelings, resentment will build and the situation will likely remain the same…When you ask someone to change their behaviour, be willing to do the same. If you both are willing to bend at least a little, you’ll have a good chance of finding a happy middle ground.’

 

4. Be more assertive: ‘Don’t take a backseat in your own life,’ Clements insists. ‘Deal with problems head on, doing your best to anticipate and prevent them. If you’ve got an exam to study for and your chatty roommate just got home, say up front that you only have five minutes to talk.’

 

5. Improve your time management: Isn’t it often the case that you’re the most stressed right before a big deadline? ‘Poor time management can cause a lot of stress,’ Clements notes. ‘When you’re stretched too thin and running behind, it’s hard to stay calm and focused. But if you plan ahead and make sure you don’t overextend yourself, you can alter the amount of stress your under.’

 

6. Step back and adapt: ‘Try to view stressful situations from a more positive perspective,’ Clements suggests. ‘Rather than fuming about a traffic jam, look at it as an opportunity to pause and regroup, listen to your favourite music, or enjoy some alone time…Take perspective of the stressful situation. Ask yourself how important it will be in the long run. Will it matter in a month? A year? Is it really worth getting upset over? If the answer is no, focus your time and energy elsewhere.’

Categories: avoid stressors, clements, nbsp, Stress, stress nbsp, time, Time Management, To Do List, year

Where are My Keys? Three Top Tricks to Boost Your Memory

How often have you torn the house apart in search of your keys, and found that they were in your bag all along? Maybe your boss told you how to do something which, not ten minutes later, you’ve completely forgotten, or perhaps you walked the kids to school and then, at the gate, remembered that today was the bake sale, and you were in charge of bringing the cookies. According to Martha Weinman Lear, author of the forthcoming book Where Did I Leave My Glasses? The What, When, and Why of Normal Memory Loss, getting forgetful is normal as you age, but you don’t have to put up with it.

Firstly, if you need to keep track of all the things on your To Do list, play a little mind game. Creatively tie all your tasks together, as if you were telling yourself a story involving your appointments and errands. Scott Hagwood, a memory contest champ and author of Memory Power: You Can Develop a Great Memory—America’s Grand Master Shows You How, explains, ‘Say you have to remember to buy milk and also take your son to the dentist. You can link those tasks together by imagining your son drinking a glass of milk, and seeing the milk wash over his teeth, depositing calcium.’

If you have a little trouble remembering names, a few eye exercises can help. According to British researchers, if you stop and move your eyes back and forth horizontally for 30 seconds before you enter a room full of people, it will help you retain the words and names that you hear. This is because your brain’s hemispheres interact with the horizontal movement, which memory wellness experts say is important in retrieving information.

To be one of those people who can multitask gracefully, try learning a new language. Margie Lachman, PhD, professor and chair of psychology at Brandeis University, and director of the Lifespan Developmental Psychology Laboratory, says ‘Stretch your mind, and you can create new pathways in the brain,’ which help you stay on top of things. Just drilling a few vocabulary words of a different language alongside an instructional CD in the car, or taking up a hobby like cooking or dancing, can get those pathways brewing.

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Where are My Keys? Three Top Tricks to Boost Your Memory

Categories: memory, Remembering Names, To Do List