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How A Pregnancy Calculator Can Help With Planning For Your Baby
A pregnancy calculator takes all the guesswork out of your due date. What this neat tool does is it works out your due date by adding one year to the first day of your last period, subtracting three months, and adding seven days to that date. That results in a gestational period of 280 days or 40 weeks until you meet your baby.
For example, if the first day of your last period was April 10th, then your due date is December 18th. But instead of you having to use all your fingers and toes and diaries, a pregnancy calculator does that all for you in a blink of an eye.
Keep reading to learn more about how a pregnancy calculator can help you plan for your new arrival.
Financial Preparation
Once you know the date of your child’s arrival, it might be wise to get out your bank book and see how long you can afford to take maternity and paternity leave, as you may be earning less income. Make sure you know exactly what you will and will not get financially over the leave period and update your budget accordingly. Employees are entitled to parental leave pay from the Australian Government as well as paid parental leave from their employer. If you get unpaid parental leave, you are still entitled to paid parental leave from the government.
Update any beneficiaries on any retirement or life insurance policies. If you don’t have life insurance, now is a good time to look into it. The same goes for a will. If you don’t have one, write one. If you do have one, update it with the latest arrangements. Create a savings plan, if you have not already done so. This will help you with any added expenses that you will incur once your baby is here.
Give Notice For Work
Family leave policies differ from company to company. Find out what amount of pay you are entitled to and the length of leave that you are entitled to take. The Australian Government paid parental leave scheme entitles eligible employees, who are the primary carer of a newborn or adopted child up to 18 weeks’ leave paid at the national minimum wage. Don’t worry dads, you also get 2 weeks paid leave paid at the national minimum wage. Again, dads should also find out what their company’s policy is for paternity leave.
Preparing Your Diet
When you are pregnant and preparing for the Baby’s arrival, the best thing you can do is to take the right steps that will help with this. Now, there are a lot of things that you need to try to focus on as much as possible, and preparing your diet is one of the key ways of planning for your baby. There are bound to be cravings that you have to deal with when you are pregnant, and it is important to make sure you think about some of the key ideas that will let you stock up on the essentials you need. It is also important to make sure you research the things you love to eat and drink and how your pregnancy can affect them, such as whether you can drink kombucha while pregnant. Using a pregnancy calculator to help plan for your baby’s arrival is so important, and there are a lot of ways in which you can make the most of this moving forward.
Preparing The Home
Decorating and organising the nursery usually happens in the second trimester when mums have more energy than the first trimester. A tip for the nursery is to decide on a theme. Is it going to be pink and girly? Or are you going to opt for a blueish boy colour? If you’re not finding out the sex of the baby, yellow can also work because it’s neutral and happy. Light green has shown to be a colour that soothes and calms.
Clean the room thoroughly and set up furniture like the crib and breastfeeding station accordingly. You can install a dimmer switch to accommodate those night feedings and oil the door hinges so they don’t creak when the door is opened and closed. Install a smoke and carbon monoxide detector if the room is not already equipped with these.
Emotional Preparation
Pregnancy is different for everyone. Some mums-to-be are smiling throughout and some mums aren’t. It is wise to prepare yourself either way. Understanding the risk factors and knowing what to expect will help you put your mind at ease. We are usually afraid of the unknown, so, face that fear head-on by finding out all about those unknown areas of pregnancy. Those questions that you are too afraid to ask are the exact reason that you are afraid.
Seek out social support from your friends and family. This is no time to isolate yourself from others. You can also join a local mother’s support group. There you will find people that are going through what you are going through and you will get the necessary support needed.
Put Your Feet Up
There is a saying: proper preparation prevents poor performance. The reason why it’s so important to plan and prepare things in advance, especially when expecting, is so that you can take it easier in your third trimester. When you know you have done everything that needs to be done, it will help you to relax and put your feet up and enjoy a well-deserved break. You deserve it. After all, you’re growing a human being inside you.
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