Unmentionables

If you've been reading this blog all along, you know that I really enjoyed Jenny McCarthy's 2 books: Belly Laughs & Baby Laughs. I enjoyed her candidness, even though it may have seemed crude at times. She talked about things people just don't talk about or you won't find in one of your baby books. And for some reason I feel compelled to share some of my own experiences with you, even the ones others won't talk about. Because to be honest, almost everything that would seem odd when you are not pregnant, if pretty normal. I talked about belly hair earlier, but today I am going to talk about nipple conditioning & shaving (legs & pubic hair). **I can't wait to see what kind of searches are brought to my site after this post.**

Let's start with nipple conditioning. What is it? Well, it is rubbing your nipples & airing them in preparation for breastfeeding. Now, I said preparation, so this occurs before the baby comes. I hadn't even thought of this until I bought some of that nipple cream Kristin told me about and I read on the package about conditioning your nipples with the product before the baby comes. Now I have heard some horror stories of breastfeeding, and w/o getting into gory details, let's just say I would like to avoid any pain, cracking, masititis, bleeding, & anything else bad that could happen to my breasts. So, I've been reading. I like to read, especially non-fiction, which I know may make me a little weird, but I learn a lot. So, I'm conditioning my nipples. Actually, I've been doing it for a few days now and I have to say that they have become softer & the dryness has gone away. But I must say, I've read that you should not stimulate/condition your nipple for too long, as prolonged nipple stimulation is said to bring on contractions (something to keep in mind if I hit 40 weeks and the baby seems content staying in there.) So, to help support my choice, here's a study that was done. There is actually a lot of studies out there supporting prenatal nipple conditioning. If you want to check them out, here you go. I feel strongly that I want to breastfeed and I want to make it a pleasant experience.

Ok - next topic - Shaving.

Shaving my legs is getting harder & harder to do. You would think I would have just given up by now, considering that it's winter & no one besides the daddy sees my legs anyways. Well, honestly, I don't like body hair all that much; it kinda grosses me out. And I hate the feeling of when your leg hair gets a little long and rubs on your socks or pants. So, today I attempted to shave my legs. It's only a little difficult to do the front & the inside because you can move your leg out away from your body. It's when you are trying to do the back & outside that it gets tricky. You try turning your leg in and it gets rammed up against your protruding belly and can be quite uncomfortable. I may have to throw in the towel soon on the leg shaving, or buy an electric razor and ask the daddy to help me out (it's for his benefit too, who wants to be scratched by leg stubble in the middle of the night?) I don't think he would be comfortable (nor I) having him go at my legs with a regualr razor.

Now, trimming up pubic hair is darn near impossible. I remember the days when I was younger and the bush was in it's own neatly confined area & I didn't have to do anything. No one tells that when you get older that it starts to spread. Why can't anyone tell you thin stuff? In college I had always wondered why people got bikini waxes, I mean, C'mon, did they really hair hair growing outside their bikini line? Well, the answer to that is apparently YES. Now, get pregnant (a time when your hair & nails grow at a very rapid pace), add 10 years to that college age when things were neatly confined on their own, and you have one hairy mess below. And it's not like you can see it to do anything about it. You can try a trimmer and hope you don't leave too many bald spots from getting too close, or maybe grab a razor & mirror (not that you can really bend over too far to use the mirror anyways) and try to shave back that bikini line. But honestly, it is never going to look as pretty & neatly kept as it did before (even 3-4 months ago, when you could still kinda see & could bend over a little.) Husbands - you're just going to have to deal with the jungle down there, and if you can't, then I just guess you won't get any. And do you really want that considering you are supposed to wait a minimum of 6 weeks after birth to have sex? I think not. You know - you never see birth videos where the mom has a nice tidy area, defintlity to stripper lines or neatly carved out shapes, just full on hairy bush.