This or That pt.1
Cue “The Choice Is Yours” by Black Sheep to play while you read this post.
Every decision from the moment you find out you are pregnant feel a lot like “You can get with this or you can get with that. I think you’ll get with this, for this is where it’s at.”. From prenatals, to baby items, postpartum needs, and especially a doctor; there are so many options out there.
Before pregnancy I did a lot of research, or my husband did depending on the topic. I have a tendency to go down bad rabbit holes if it is anything medically related so he always has to do those searches. Most of the time you find a few reliable sources and go from there and its not super hard to pick or narrow things down. NOT when it comes to anything pregnancy or baby! The abundance of articles that have completely different views and where the article is published where two big things that I noticed and had to pay very close attention to when reading articles. Focusing more on medical articles for certain things and others would feel comfortable with opinions from blogs.
Since there are so many ways to gather research that depending on what it was I would start one of three ways; scrolling social media, Googling articles, or advice from experience from people that are close to me. I am not much of a book reader and didn’t read any of the actual pregnancy or parenting books. Looking back now, I wish I would have read some of them, but oh well, Google did the job.
Another form of ‘research’ I did was watching Grey’s Anatomy…. As much as I love this show, I do not recommend watching it if you have anxiety and are listed as a high risk pregnancy. Random fears would surface in the middle of the night based on which episode I was on. My lovely husband banned the show after so many nightmares over going into labor early and worst case scenario happening.
Sometimes the hours of research didn’t on something and making a decision don’t go as planned. For example, my prenatal journey. I researched the best over the counter, drugstore, prenatal that had good amounts of all the things needed. Found one, bought it, and only took it for a week. The fact that prenatals are horse pills is mind boggling! With how nauseous I was they were making me sick, so I had to scratch that idea and find the best gummy prenatal instead to take, even though all my research showed that a standard pill was better. Honestly, even those were tough some mornings, but a lot more manageable than a dang horse pill.
Social media played a huge part in the initial research of a lot of items we purchased. I would look up videos, view wishlists of influencers, and have targeted ads for ‘must have’ items. Sometimes I trusted these alone without a ton of extra research, but for the most part it was a great starting point for a list and from there I would look up reviews and articles based on the products. A lot of the time if I see something on social media I would also send it to any of my friends who have kids to see if they have heard of it. This most of the time led to both of us doing research on it and adding different perspectives on the item.
One of my favorite resources for all topics is friends and family that have recently been pregnant or were at the same time. Not that everything that worked for them and their baby’s would work for us, but it was so nice to have honest opinions we could trust and weren’t getting commission from their recommendations. There are countless items or practices that we have either purchased, book marked to purchase when the babies hit that stage in life, or adopted into our routine from their advice.
I definitely recommend starting out your research early, ask people you know and trust, and continue to do research throughout your pregnancy. New items are always being released and new information is available on things. There isn’t really a thing of being too prepared or doing too much research, since each pregnancy and baby is different.
*Pt. 2 about doctors and postpartum will be live next Tuesday*
