How I prepared for baby #2 (and what I wish I would have done)

I'm pregnant again, woo hoo! At age 38, you never quite know what's going to happen. Nursing on demand meant, for me, no period until 19 months postpartum. While I went back to work at 4 months postpartum it was part time and I pumped at work. My daughter got into full time daycare at 18 months and that might have been the catalyst even though she still nursed a handful of times overnight. Once my period was back, it was time to really focus on increasing my nutrient stores because I was ready to do it all over again! Here are the main things I focused on:

Dr. Kristen Mitteness and family in Badlands, South Dakota

1. A nutrient dense diet, filled with animal proteins. If you want more information than I could ever know, you need to read Lily Nichol's work. She has tons of free online information and two excellent books: Real Food for Fertility and Real Food for Pregnancy. My favorite way to get liver is through liverwurst from Mighty Meats. They also have some of the best pricing on local meats, in general. Sardines, salmon, steak. I ate it all. I also ate lots of fruit, veggies and quality fat - I prefer lard, butter and coconut oil. I also recommend focusing on nutrient density in your diet prior to conceiving because, chances are, when you do get pregnant, you're not going to want to eat any of it. Food aversions are real for me and many others I know.

2. I switched from a food based multi vitamin to an organ meat supplement. This is not one I would necessarily recommend for everyone and I'll have to keep you posted on the results once baby comes. But, my first born has a tongue tie (I also have one and my mother had one - hers was clipped at birth). While we didn't have any issues with my daughter (at least not yet), I was curious if the B vitamins I was taking could have been a contributing factor (over compensating for midline defects). So, I'm trying this as my prenatal instead. We'll see.

3. I started intentionally supporting my eggs. I'm no spring chicken! I recommend this for anyone over the age of 30 who wants to conceive and I highly encourage it for anyone over 35. It's called Oocyte SAP and it has some awesome ingredients for enhancing egg quality. There is also one for sperm quality, called, wait for it, Male Fertility SAP. While the trends in sperm quality are controversial, I think most people can agree that as a general population, many of us are not getting healthier and rates of infertility do seem to be increasing. It's not just a woman's problem. I recommend focusing on your own fertility health for a minimum of 3 months before conceiving, but longer will serve you well!

After 4 months of focusing on this, we started trying to conceive. I had experienced an early miscarriage prior to my first full term pregnancy, so I was mentally prepared for that to happen again. Postpartum, my ovulation symptoms were insanely obvious so that part was easy to plan for. After 6 months of trying, we were pregnant! I was still nursing and as soon as I became symptomatic in the first trimester (around 7 weeks), I loathed nursing. We were only nursing to bed and early in the morning. I got the sessions down to about 4 minutes long and around 15 weeks, we officially weaned. I have no special recommendations for this. My daughter replaced nursing with eating bananas in bed, so now she consumes 1-3 bananas every night.

Here's what I wish I would have done prior to conceiving:

1. Put on more muscle mass. I coached and competed in CrossFit for over a decade and right up and through my first postpartum. As naturally happens, I lost a lot of my muscle mass during pregnancy which, for me, results in a risk of low back pain. I deal with 2-3 good bouts of low back pain per year and it's always worse when I'm not working our regularly. Once I was back to work, I had a really hard time getting to the gym and my home workouts never compare to what I accomplish when I'm with a group of people and coaches pushing me. So, I lost some fitness. That being said, being a mom, naturally encourages some strength training (those babies don't get smaller!). But, I was a lot more sedentary (gotta love the contact naps!). During my first trimester I had a hard time doing anything physical, so I really with my fitness baseline would have been higher than it was.

2. Really savored my time as a family of three. The chaos of raising a child can come at the cost of your relationship and your appreciation for it all. I wish I would have kept track of more milestones! When did she first say "dad"? When did she master the two foot jump? I have a calendar I meant to write things down in, but rarely did.

The upside is that I can focus on both of these things for the remainder of my pregnancy, especially since I'm now in my second trimester and feeling like myself again (thank, goodness!).

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Dr. Kristen Mitteness is a webster certified chiropractor with a passion for prenatal, postnatal and pediatric care. She's a mom, co-owner of White Horse Family Wellness and loves spending time outside.