Pregnancy Resources

If you've come to my Pre-natal Fitness page, you're probably pregnant, just gave birth, or are thinking about having a baby. In addition to exercise, you undoubtedly have lots of questions, a desire to share your experiences with other expectant and new moms, and a need for pregnancy-related health information. Obviously, your obstetrician or midwife should be your first source of pregnancy information, but there's a lot for you out on the web as well. This part of my site includes various resources for helping you learn about your pregnancy, and find the information you need. Much of this will be links to external sites.

One of the best sites for Womens' Health (and other Women's issues) is iVillage, especially their ParentsPlace site. Explore their information - there are boards for various pregnancy issues, communities for people expecting during the same month, information on normal pregnancies, problems, high-risk, pretty much everything pregnancy-related you could think of. Another great resource at this site is their Interactive Pregnancy Calendar. Plug in your date of conception, or your LMP, and you'll create a calendar with expected due dates, with pregnancy information, milestones, links to information, which are relevant for each week of your pregnancy. You need a free membership at iVillage to use the calendar, which also gives you access to all their boards, free e-mail, and other goodies. I've been Conference Leader with iVillage on some of their fitness-related boards. You may occasionally find me posting there as aerobigal.

If you are comfortable with using Usenet (the international text-based discussion board part of the net) and your system is set up for newsgroups, you may want to check out misc.kids.pregnancy If you want to read it and participate through a web-based interface (or if you aren't set up for Usenet news), you can access it via Google Groups (formerly Deja) with this link. I don't spend too much time on Usenet (I'm not into flame wars) but there is some good information, and community-building there - but judge what you read carefully.

Check back for new ideas and links from time to time. And please send me your suggestions for pregnancy-related links.