chris huerta new2dad

Week 6 Pregnancy Check-in for Dads

chris

Jun 6, 2020 — 3 min read

This is a part of what I’m calling the NEW2DAD Check-in Series. Each post will share my experience at different stages during Karla’s pregnancy.

Hi friends!

This is my Week 6 (June 6, 2020) Check-in. It’s 6:30am, Karla is asleep and Mia (our cat) is zooming across the apartment. Time to take advantage of this relative silence before we kick off our day.

Morning sickness is still here

It just won’t go away! As Karla put it, she’s experiencing “debilitating nausea.” It’s no joke. If your partner didn’t experience this or did but not to this extent, consider yourselves lucky! Even though I’m not experiencing the symptoms, I do feel a little helpless (there’s nothing I can do) and stressed since I’m limited to what I can eat.

Right now we’ve been eating a lot of the following foods:

Paleo pancakes (we like Birch Benders)
Oatmeal with berries, crushed almonds and honey
Greek Yogurt with berries
Sprouted cinnamon raisin toast
Quesadillas
Bean chili

Karla is also a few days into her nausea medication (yes, it was that bad). So, maybe it’s kicking in and allowing her to venture into more foods? I’m not sure, but I’m not ready to take out the chicken and put it on the grill just yet.

We have a doula!

I plan on writing a separate post about this because I had no idea what a doula was before Karla and I started talking about having a baby.

We met our Doula at the Houston B.I.R.T.H. Fair in October 2019.

Side note: if you’re planning on having a baby, check to see if there are any types of birth fairs or conferences around you (taking the necessary precautions, of course). There are plenty of great resources there and they help give you a better idea of what pregnancy and birth are like. If possible, it’s great to attend these before pregnancy since it gives you more time to plan and discuss what you’ve learned.

Anyway – we wrote down the names of a few doulas and followed up with them after the conference and a few months ago when we made the decision to conceive.

We interviewed two doulas and ended up going with the one we wanted to since the beginning! We are excited to have her as a resource as it provides some peace of mind knowing we have someone who knows how this entire thing goes down (pregnancy, birth, hospital interactions, etc.).

We’re moving… upstairs

We live in a one-bedroom apartment and planned on staying here another year before buying a house. However, things have changed pretty quickly.

COVID-19 means we’re both working home (fortunately). However, there’s not a lot of space for us in this apartment for that. Karla’s at the desk, I’m at the dinner table and files, documents, office supplies, etc. are starting to pile up.

I’m also not able to film my videos for my tech YouTube channel without clearing out the entire apartment.

Finally – with a baby coming in January, we took a good look around to see where the baby would go and… well, it’d be cramped.

Luckily, we were able to contact our property manager, explain our situation and negotiate an arrangement where we move into a 2BR unit for the next year. It’s literally right above our current unit, so we’re hoping the moving doesn’t take too much effort.

The short turnaround is a little stressful, but in the end we’re glad we’re going to have a bigger space to separate our work environment and eventually have a dedicated place for our little one.