As you get further along in your pregnancy, you may be feeling like you’re carrying around a watermelon.

Here’s a good way to preserve that feeling – have your sister paint a watermelon on your belly!

Fun – easy wash off – non toxic.  And you’ll always have the photo to share.

Along the lines of interesting pregnancy photos, I found this one on the fit pregnancy site. Now that’s a real “WOW” moment!

Sometimes finding pregnant friends to share in your experience can be tough – and a little lonely.

Sure, you have plenty of well wishers and older parents and relatives that have all been through it, but it would be nice to have someone going through it now to talk to.  Here are some resources I found to aid in the search.

Online Pregnancy Forums

If you don’t have a lot of time to socialize, there are plenty of pregnancy forums online.  Thousands of women who just love to share their experiences. It’s  a great way to get some advice about baby products, parenting and anything related to being pregnant.  I found a really great one here:

The Pregnancy Forum

Here are some others:

The Pregnant Connection

Just Mommies

Baby and Bump

You can also join a Due Date Club, which is just for expectant mothers due in the same month as you! Here’s one: Baby Zone Due Date Club

New Mom Meetups

If you’d like to meet some moms-to-be or new moms in person, find a Meetup group in your area.  If you are unfamiliar with Meetups, just go to Meetup.com , type in New Moms and your city in the search box and you should be able to find plenty of groups to join.  Meetups are generally free.  You may have to experiment to find the right group that fits your style, but they can be a lot of fun – as well as informative.

It’s definitely time to start shopping for baby gear.  With the dizzy array of car seats, cribs, bassinets, swings, playpens and all the other gear, not to mention all the breast feeding equipment, diapers, monitors and… well, you get the idea.

I do most of my shopping online, but my daughter and I decided that we should take a trip to Target to see and touch everything firsthand.

We ended up meandering around the baby section totally overwhelmed and confused. Not to mention, they really didn’t have a great selection.  Turns out, Target (like many stores these days) has a much better selection online than in the store!

So I’ll be doing what I do best – looking online.  It’s easy to compare reviews and get a better sense of what the cost should be.

If you are lucky enough to have relatives or friends with babies – be sure to ask them their opinions.  Nothing like some first-hand knowledge to help you make a decision.

I did find this checklist of gear for a baby’s first year, along with some prices. I’m not sure when it was written, but I think the prices are a little low.

It’s still interesting to have a list. You can get it by scrolling all the way to the bottom of this page:

http://www.bobbysbest.com/baby-strollers-car-seat-travel-review.html

You’ll see a section called “Baby’s First Year Checklist”.

There are plenty of other Baby Checklist sites, but this was an easy to read, all-in-one-place excel spreadsheet with price averages.

I’ll be sharing some of the other baby shopping sites as I find them.

Shopping for baby gear makes it all seem so real, doesn’t it?

Here’s a suggestion from a reader:

Preparing food for your grandkids is a time-honored way of showing your love, but isn’t it even more loving to teach them how to make the food? I thought you and your readers would be interested in this warm grandma’s story about teaching her kids and grandkids to cook:

http://www.guideposts.org/recipes/grandmother-passes-love-cooking

Here’s an excerpt:
“As a mother, then a grandmother, I had hope that my love of cooking would get passed on. It was a blessing when my grandson showed interest… Cooking together has been a recipe for happy memories”.

Here are some fun new free sweepstakes  if you are pregnant. I found them at FitPregnancy.

It changes every month, so be sure to check back for new stuff. Read the rest of this entry