Pregnancy Pro Tips: Essential Hacks That Will Change Your Life

Ashley - July 6, 2023

Photo: momewear.com

Pregnancy is one of those life-changing experiences that no one can ever prepare you for. No matter how many books you read, videos you watch, or podcasts you listen to, there will always be unexpected symptoms or sensations that take you by surprise and make you question how you can live like this for nine full months! Being part of the miracle of creating life doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to find ways to minimize your discomfort. You can still be in awe of the amazing things your body is doing while searching for hacks to ease your journey. Some women find pregnancy pretty rough, but there are definitely ways to make it smoother sailing. We’ve compiled a list of the best tips, tricks, and hacks from all around the internet to help you enjoy your pregnancy with minimal stress. These innovative hacks will empower every mom-to-be to face their pregnancy journey with confidence and comfort!

Use Coconut Oil On Your Bump

One of the many concerns women have as they reach their second and third trimesters is the appearance of stretch marks. Your body is doing something amazing and stretching far beyond its usual size in a relatively short period to accommodate another life. Those blue, red, or purple stretch marks are totally normal, but they can also make a person feel self-conscious. There are a thousand creams and oils on the market designed to help reduce the appearance of stretch marks and strengthen a woman’s skin during her pregnancy, but companies often charge an arm-and-a-leg for these products. In reality, most stretch mark creams and oils are made of a couple of simple ingredients. Coconut oil helps hydrate skin and has anti-inflammatory properties that will help reduce the appearance of stretch marks. Use that in combination with some vitamin E oil, and you’ll see a massive decrease in the size of your stretch marks without breaking the bank!

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Learn To Kinesio Tape Your Belly

Along with all the joys of pregnancy, you’ll also run into some discomfort, especially as you enter your last few months. Dealing with an ever-expanding belly is challenging for even the most athletic women. Your organs are being pushed out of the way as your center of gravity changes, which can lead to back pain, poor posture, and other complications. That’s why you need to learn the art of kinesio taping your belly! Strategically place a strip of elastic therapeutic tape underneath the biggest curve of your belly. Then, add two strips vertically, running from the bottom strip to just above the top curve of your belly. This will provide additional support to keep your baby bump from bouncing around while you attend to your day-to-day activities. It improves circulation and posture, which reduces back pain and overall discomfort.

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Identify Your Ideal Sleeping Position

Pregnant women get told not to do a lot of things. You can’t eat seafood and deli meat. Your favorite morning coffee or latte? A thing of the past! And forget about having anything alcoholic for the foreseeable future. All the restrictions placed on pregnant women are for the health of them and their babies, but it’s hard not to feel frustrated after months of being unable to do or have the things you enjoy. Which brings us to sleeping habits. Most women struggle to get a full night’s rest during pregnancy. It’s hard to find a comfortable position, especially when you’re getting up to empty your bladder every twenty minutes! But you don’t have to restrict yourself to only laying on your left side with a pregnancy pillow. Stomach sleepers will be happy to learn that you can still sleep on your stomach with a little creative improvising. Get an inner tube, throw a comfy blanket over it, and lay on that so you’re not putting pressure on your stomach!

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Make A List And Check It Twice

Packing for the hospital is often stressful, especially for first-time moms. Veteran moms might think they have the whole process down, but there’s still the wonderful pregnancy brain to account for. The last thing you want while recovering from childbirth and bonding with your newborn is to send someone out to grab a bunch of stuff you forgot to pack! That’s why it’s important to make a list of all the essentials and some nice-to-haves and check it twice. Pack your maternity bag a couple of months before your expected due date, just in case your little one decides to make an early appearance. Make sure you double and even triple-check your list and the packed bag to ensure you have everything you and your little one will need. Once it’s packed and you know for a fact it has everything you want and need, you’ll have one less thing to stress about!

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Ditch Nursing Pads And Use Panty Liners Instead

One of those things new moms often learn the hard way is your body becomes obsessed with providing milk. Seriously, you can hear a baby crying on a television show or commercial, and suddenly your shirt will be soaked with breastmilk. This can create a ton of mess and extra laundry if you’re not prepared, and no postpartum mom wants to deal with additional mess (or smelling like milk all the time)! There are nursing pads you can buy specifically to put in your bra and catch the extra milk, but these are often way overpriced. Instead, grab some cheap panty liners and use those to line your bra instead! They’ll save you a ton of money, stress, and mess. You can even cut them in half to make them last longer if you typically don’t leak much or wear a smaller bra size. You may also want to consider getting a Hakka or similar breastmilk catch for when you’re hanging around at home so the liquid doesn’t go to waste.

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Eliminate Nausea With Peppermint Essential Oil

One of the worst aspects of pregnancy, especially during the first trimester, is the constant morning sickness. The name is pretty misleading because most women experience morning sickness throughout the day and night, especially when exposed to certain smells. This constant nausea can make eating a full meal or enjoying your day-to-day activities impossible. However, there’s a simple trick to soothe your nausea. Smelling peppermint essential oil when you feel your stomach rolling will help soothe the uncomfortable sensation. Plus, it can be rubbed on your temples to help ease headaches! Pro tip: Pack some peppermint essential oil in your hospital bag. Not every expecting mother knows that the pain of labor can cause nausea, and it’s super unpleasant to puke your guts out while experiencing contractions. Peppermint essential oil can help soothe your upset stomach during the active stages of labor.

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Simple DIY Belly Band

This easy DIY hack will help you solve two of the biggest pregnancy woes- finding clothes that actually fit and spending too much on maternity clothes. Maternity clothes are super expensive, and regular clothes often don’t fit over a nearly full-term baby bump. All you need to complete is hack an old tank top you don’t mind parting with and a pair of scissors. Just cut the straps off your tank top and slip it on so it sits low and completely covers your belly. Then, throw on your favorite shirt and check out your work in a mirror. The tank top will provide additional coverage so you can wear your favorite shirt, even if it doesn’t stretch all the way over your belly. Plus, the layering looks super cute! If you don’t have any tank tops at home you’re willing to part with, grab some cheap ones from your local dollar or thrift store. Grab neutral colors so they’ll match any outfit.

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Use This Remedy To Treat Acid Reflux

Do you know the old wives’ tale that expectant mothers experiencing severe acid reflux are likely to birth a baby with a full head of hair? Whether or not this is true is open for debate, but there’s no debating that pregnant women often struggle with severely uncomfortable acid reflux. Unfortunately, over-the-counter medications only do so much, and some women are instructed not to take OTC meds by their doctors. In this case, you need a solid alternative to ease that awful sensation so you can get a good night’s rest! Thankfully, you likely have everything you need in your kitchen cabinet for this remedy. Get a glass of warm water and mix in two tablespoons of baking soda. Drink the glass quickly (but don’t chug it!) and then sit upright. The baking soda will neutralize the acid and provide much-needed relief. Other tips to reduce acid reflux during pregnancy include eating slowly, sitting upright for at least thirty minutes after a meal, and avoiding tight-fitting clothes.

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Keep A Snack Stash Everywhere

One of the most common symptoms of pregnancy is insatiable hunger. Your body is under a lot of pressure to provide additional nutrients to your growing baby, so it’s constantly sending signals to your brain that it needs more fuel. Don’t let yourself get caught in traffic or the school pick-up line without some healthy snacks at your disposal. Keep a snack stash everywhere, like your car’s glovebox, nightstand, purse, etc. Fill your stash with healthy snacks, including nuts, crackers, trail mix, and anything else to soothe your hunger. Make sure to include a couple of water bottles with your snack stash as well. The average person typically needs about eight cups of water a day, but many pregnant women find themselves guzzling twelve or more cups per day. Always make sure you have water nearby!

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Keep Your Medications Organized

Mom guilt starts as soon as you become pregnant. It’s human nature to question if we’re doing the right things or doing things well enough for our future children. Pregnancy brain is a real phenomenon, and it often makes it difficult to keep track of the little things they’re expected to do every day, like taking prenatal vitamins. Women instructed to take additional medications and supplements face an even larger struggle remembering to take all these different things daily or weekly. That’s why investing in a medication organizer is so important! A pill organizer makes remembering to take the medications you need easy. Some additional tips: Set an alarm on your phone for the times you need to take your meds each day and keep your pill organizer somewhere obvious, like your kitchen counter. It’ll be way harder to forget about if it’s right in your face at the end of the night rather than hiding in your medicine cabinet.

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DIY “Padsicle” Hack

Giving birth is one of the most magical, transformative experiences of a woman’s life, but it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. The recovery period can often be uncomfortable or painful, especially if you tore or needed an episiotomy. Try this DIY “padsicle” hack to give yourself some much-needed relief. First, take a thick pad and place it on your kitchen counter or table. Then, apply some all-natural ingredients like aloe vera, witch hazel, and olive or jojoba oil. Wrap the pad back up, place it in a freezer bag, and stick it in your freezer. After you deliver, you can pull out the pad and wear it when you need relief. Do this to a handful of overnight pads before you deliver so you have a solid supply when you return home from the hospital. This will be way more comfortable and offer more relief than those giant ice packs they stick in the mesh postpartum underwear in the hospital!

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Fight Nausea With Motion Sickness Bands

Some women really struggle with morning sickness, especially during their first trimester. If you tried our peppermint essential oil and didn’t get the relief you need, this is another solid drug-free option to try. Sea-sickness bands have become super popular with pregnant women in recent years because they offer solid relief from nausea, and you don’t have to worry about taking any medications that could interfere with your pregnancy. These bands work through acupressure. The little buttons on the bands apply constant pressure to your P6 points, which should help keep your stomach calm. You can keep these bands in your purse and around the home to use whenever you need them. These bands are convenient, effective, and more affordable than constantly buying more anti-nausea medications.

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Use A Hair-Tie To Keep Your Jeans Together

We’ve already touched on the fact that maternity clothes are expensive! It’s a huge financial burden to replace your entire wardrobe, especially since you’ll only be wearing your maternity clothes for a handful of months. To keep using your regular clothes for as long as possible, you need some tricks that will keep them in place. The jeans are usually the first things to get tossed out of a person’s wardrobe as their baby bump becomes noticeable. This type of fabric isn’t known for having much stretch or give to it, but there is a way to get a little extra wear out of your jeans. Simply thread a hair-tie through the buttonhole of your jeans and then thread it back through its tail. Pull it tight, and then pull the hair-tie over the button to hold your jeans in place. Wear a shirt with one of the DIY tank-top belly bands that we described earlier in this list, and no one will even be able to tell that a hair-tie is holding your jeans together!

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Create A DIY First-Aid Kit For Baby

Newborns have delicate immune systems. The last thing you want to deal with while navigating the complexities of postpartum recovery is realizing you’re out of an essential item for your little one. Create a DIY newborn first aid kit to ensure you have everything you need before your baby arrives. Pack your first aid kit with essentials like an infant thermometer, infant Tylenol, little bandaids, aquaphor or another diaper rash cream, infant ibuprofen, extra medicine syringes, colic drops, cough drops, suction devices to remove excess snot, and nail clippers. Put everything in a clear plastic bin and make a list of everything that’s inside. Tape the list to the top of the bin so you can easily find what you need once your little one is home. Plus, having a list on top will make it easier for you to notice when you’re running low on something and need to pick up more.

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Save Your Bras With Bra Extenders

It’s no secret that a woman’s body grows and changes as they go through their pregnancy. One of the clothing items that often need to be replaced at some point during pregnancy is your bra. But bras are incredibly expensive, and no one wants to replace their bra because it got stretched out during pregnancy or because it no longer fits in your third trimester. Save your bras by buying bra extenders! Plenty of stores sell these in four or six-packs and they’re significantly cheaper than buying new bras. Use these to keep your bras from stretching out as you go through your pregnancy. Then, when you’ve returned to your usual size, you can simply pack up the bra extenders and go back to using your bra without them! This is a great money-saving trick that every mom-to-be needs to know!

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Try Apple Cider Vinegar For Acid Reflux

Many women prefer to try natural remedies to cure their acid reflux rather than taking over-the-counter or prescription medications. If you tried the baking soda trick and didn’t get the relief you were hoping for, we have another all-natural alternative for you to test out! Apple cider vinegar has been used in medicinal remedies for centuries, and it’s recently become a popular choice for people to treat heartburn and acid reflux. The idea is to mix a couple of tablespoons in a glass of warm water and drink it slowly. Apple cider vinegar is a probiotic, and the theory behind why it works for this purpose is that it introduces healthy bacteria into your gut. This creates a better balance between the healthy and unhealthy microbes living in your gut, which should lead to a reduction in uncomfortable symptoms like acid reflux.

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Make Household Chores Easier With Kitchen Tongs

Once you hit a certain stage in your pregnancy, some chores become almost physically impossible to do. Anything that involves climbing high on a stepladder and reaching high above your head is typically off-limits to pregnant women. But that doesn’t prevent our nesting instinct from making us want to reach up and dust the highest blinds in our homes! Rather than let the dust build up or ask someone to take over this chore, try this handy hack. Grab a pair of kitchen tongs, a couple of rubber bands, and your preferred cleaning tool (sponge, clean cloth, etc). Squeeze the sponge or cloth with the kitchen tongs and hold it in place with a rubber band. Then you can easily dust hard-to-reach places without having to risk using a stepstool. Also, kitchen tongs make a great tool for picking things up off the floor when you don’t want to bend down!

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Keep A Pregnancy Brain Journal

Whether you call it “pregnancy brain” or “baby brain,” there’s no denying that pregnant women have a tendency to become forgetful. Your body is going through a plethora of changes, and sometimes it creates a brain fog that’s hard to shake. If you’re noticing that you’re missing a lot of essentials in your daily or weekly routine, then it’s time to keep a pregnancy brain journal. Write down a list of all the things you need to do, organized by day, week, and month in your journal. At the end of the day, you can check the items you remembered to do off your list. Anything that didn’t get done, you simply add to your list the following day. Keep your journal on your nightstand or in your purse so you always have it in the same spot. The last thing you want is to forget where you put your pregnancy brain journal!

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Add This To Your Shopping List

There is a ton of shopping to do when you’re pregnant. You have to buy an entire wardrobe for a tiny human, baby furniture, toys, medications, nursing items or bottles, and so much more. However, you need to trust us when we say to add this to your shopping list! Make sure you get a plastic mattress protector for after you deliver. There are several reasons this is a necessity. First, leakage is going to happen and some women are overproducers. Breastmilk can soak through your sheets and into your mattress. This is pretty hard to clean out, and replacing your mattress would be a huge hassle. Another reason is baby messes. You’ll probably cuddle up with your little one in bed on multiple occasions, and babies are notoriously messy! A plastic mattress protector will save you from spending ages cleaning your mattress or spending hundreds of dollars on a replacement.

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Freeze Grapes For A Delicious Summer Treat

Pregnancy during the hottest months of the year is particularly rough. It’s hard to cool down and feel comfortable when you’re heavily pregnant. Instead of reaching for an ice cream bar or a cold glass of milk (both of which could make your acid reflux worse!) try this trick instead! Simply put your favorite grapes in a bowl and stick them in the freezer for a couple of hours. When you pull them out, they’ll be the perfect cold treat to soothe your body. It’s a healthy, delicious snack that’s guaranteed to provide you with some relief during the warm summer months. Plus, you can do this with other fruits too! Berries, cherries, peaches, and plums are all excellent choices that freeze well and work as a delicious treat when you need to cool off.

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Get A Squatty Potty

Many women suffer from constipation during pregnancy. This can cause a ton of unnecessary discomfort and even cause concern for women later in their pregnancy when they’re straining to use the bathroom. That extra stress isn’t good for your body, but there’s an easy solution that doesn’t involve over-the-counter laxatives, most of which aren’t recommended for use during pregnancy. Grab a squatty potty for your bathroom and give it a try. Elevating your feet in this way raises your knees closer to your chest and aligns your colon to provide easier relief. Not only is this a great item to have around during your pregnancy, but it will help a ton during postpartum too. Most women are given laxatives after birth to help with that first nerve wracking bowel movement, but with a squatty potty, you’ll know you can use the bathroom without straining or anxiety.

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Use Epsom Salt To Soothe Swollen Feet And Ankles

Plenty of women struggle with swollen feet and ankles during pregnancy. Your body is retaining a lot more water than usual during this time, and those additional fluids will often gather in the lowest parts of your body during the day, especially if you’ve been spending a lot of time on your feet. The swelling can feel pretty uncomfortable, but there’s a simple way to help it go down. Fill a tub with warm water and a cup of epsom salt. Soak your feet for twenty to thirty minutes before getting out. After your soak, make sure to keep your feet elevated for another twenty to thirty minutes to prevent the swelling from coming back. Side note: be careful not to use hot water when you’re soaking your feet. Raising your body temperature too high is a big no-no during pregnancy, which is why you’re not supposed to indulge in hot tubs either.

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Eat Dates To Help With Labor

Labor is one of those experiences that is hard to describe. It’s a painful process, but some women experience more pain than others. There are plenty of old wives’ tales about ways to help ease your labor, but this one actually has some science behind it! Studies have proven that women who ate about six dates a day for four weeks before their due date had a shorter first stage of labor and their cervix was softer before delivery. Eating dates has also been proven to reduce the need for oxytocin, which is a drug used to speed up or induce labor. More research is needed to understand fully why this works, but science tell us that date fruit acts on prostaglandin receptors, causes early stimulation of uterine contractions, and improves response to syntocinon if it is necessary. Basically, it helps your body prepare for and get through the beginning stages of labor!

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Get All The Freebies Possible

It’s no secret that kids are expensive! All the diapers, wipes, formula, nursing supplies, baby furniture, and more can really add up. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to score some freebies during your pregnancy. You can sign up with popular formula companies like Enfamil to get free formula samples, coupons, and discounts. Set up your baby registry through Target to get a welcome gift box worth $100! Search online for coupon codes that allow you to get certain baby items, like carseat covers, for free or at a major discount. The world is full of possibilities for baby freebies, and there’s no harm in getting what you can for free or lowered prices. Also, make sure to check out thrift and discount stores. Many of them have brand new baby furniture for half the price of what you’d pay in any other store.

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Grab Some Ginger Beer

Don’t worry, we’re not suggesting an alcoholic beverage for pregnant women! Ginger beer is similar to ginger ale, but it’s brewed, which means it’s full of healthy bacteria. This bacteria will help improve your digestion, reduce your symptoms of acid reflux and heartburn, and eliminate morning sickness! You can buy ginger beer at most grocery stores and supermarkets, but you can also learn how to make it yourself at home. Ginger beer has been used for centuries as a remedy to improve digestion and reduce acid reflux and nausea. It’s an all-natural and simple alternative to over-the-counter medications that will help keep you happy and comfortable.

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Make A Birth Plan

You don’t want to walk into the hospital with no idea of what to expect or what you want to happen. There are so many variables to consider when giving birth and it’s helpful to write down a birth plan months ahead of time. Discuss your birth plan with your support person and your healthcare professionals to ensure everyone is on the same page. Some things you might want to include in your birth plan are what position you want to push in, ways you want to help facilitate labor, whether you want an epidural or other pain management, when you will allow other people into your room, whether you want your doctors to break your water early on or wait until it’s medically necessary, whether you want a membrane sweep performed, and how you want the golden hour to go.

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Make Your Water More Appealing

There are a lot of things pregnant women can’t drink. No more Kombucha, coffee, energy drinks, alcoholic beverages, and even certain herbal teas are off-limits. This doesn’t leave women with a ton of options, but it’s super important to stay hydrated! You can make water more appealing to drink by adding slices of fruits or veggies for some additional flavor. Strawberry slices work wonders for sweetening up water. If you prefer a more herbal flavor, try adding cucumber slices with a few leaves of mint into your tea. The mint can also help ease nausea, so you’ll definitely want to try this trick! Another pro tip: keep your water nice and cold. It’ll make it taste better and keep you from feeling overheated.

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Eat Bananas Every Day

We all know the importance of finding healthy snacks during pregnancy, and bananas are an absolute powerhouse. Seriously, this fruit should be at the top of your healthy snacks list during pregnancy. They’re rich in carbohydrates, which will provide you the extra energy you need when you’re struggling with pregnancy fatigue. They’re also great for women who suffer from anemia because they give your hemoglobin levels a solid boost. Plus, these fruits are chock full of potassium, which will help keep those awful leg cramps at bay. As if all that weren’t incentive enough, bananas also have alkaline properties, which makes them an excellent snack to help reduce symptoms of acid reflux and heartburn!

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Trick For Restless Leg Syndrome

Did you know that 20% of women develop restless leg syndrome during their third trimester? Restless leg syndrome is characterized by an awful, undeniable itching, burning, or crawling sensation in the legs and feet. This sensation generally happens when you go to lie down at night, and it can make it impossible to get a decent night’s sleep. Most of the time, the only way to ease those uncomfortable sensations is to get up and walk around for a while, but this can be difficult when you’re on week three of interrupted sleep due to this condition. The next time you can’t sleep because of restless legs, grab a heating pad. Lay the heating pad over your legs, put it on the lowest setting, and leave it on your legs for ten to fifteen minutes. This should help ease those sensations and allow you to get some sleep. This syndrome disappears for most women once they give birth!

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Invest In A Good Rocking Chair

This may seem like common sense, but many women opt not to get a rocking chair when they’re looking to reduce their costs. However, we can’t stress enough how useful a rocking chair will be, especially during the fourth trimester. Babies don’t realize they’re separate from their mothers for the first four months of their lives. This leads to them wanting to be constantly attached to their mothers, and if your baby is nursing, they’re likely to cluster feed for hours at a time in the beginning. A rocking chair is a perfect place to nurse your baby, get in some much-needed skin-to-skin time, and rock a fussy newborn to sleep. It will give you a place to relax while caring for your baby, and the rocking motion will prove extremely soothing.

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