A pregnancy journal is a diary that helps pregnant women knows their symptoms and experiences. It enabled you to keep track of your everyday moods. It can also act as a newsletter that gives you information on various topics related to pregnancy.

Today, these journals are available online as well. These are interactive and help you understand your pregnancy milestones. Using these online diaries, you can share your pregnancy period with loved ones. You can continue to maintain these journals even after the birth of your child and share the moments with your child when he or she is older.

Pregnancy Journals are available on topics like pregnancy diet, the probable due date, breastfeeding, week-by-week pregnancy details, advice for stay-at-home moms or working moms, and many more. These journals are filled with a lot of first hand information: from newly pregnant women to full-fledged moms that it becomes helpful for others in more ways than one.

Although no two pregnancies are alike, there is plenty of common ground. For women who are planning to conceive or have recently conceived, this information can be very beneficial for the beginning phase of the pregnancy.

What Does A Pregnancy Journal Contain?

It is an outlet for your feelings and emotions. It is a place where you can take refuge and write down every detail about your incredible journey. It is a personal diary where you can record small secrets: the names that you are considering for the baby, the tests that you have been through and other things. This can be used as a keepsake folder to store pictures, doctor’s notes, and nursery ideas.

You can record all the aspects and elements of your pregnancy such as baby updates, body updates, and mind updates.

During pregnancy, the most important record is that of your pregnancy diet plan. What you eat during pregnancy not only affects the health of your child during the nine months when it is a fetus but also in the later stages in life. Maintaining your daily diet in your journal lets you keep a check on every food item that you eat.

What You Can Write In A Pregnancy Journal

• The firsts: the first person you told the news to when you experienced symptoms of pregnancy, your first doctor’s visit, the first time you wore maternity clothes, and the like.

• Weekly weights and measurements

• Tests and their results

• Reactions to your developing body

• Questions to ask the doctor

• Pregnancy diet

• Cravings and mood swings

• Changes happening to the body and mind

A pregnancy journal is a day by day record of your pregnancy. It could act as a guide for your forthcoming pregnancies or for other women in your family that get pregnant at a later date.

Technically, it is possible to be pregnant from the age when girls begin to ovulate. And, this begins at the age of 11. Also, women can attain pregnancy even at 45-50 years of age. Then, why is it said that the best age for any woman to get pregnant is 25-35 years, especially when it is known that women in the age group of 18-25 are at the best of their fertility? There are many reasons for the same.

The first and foremost reason why most of women prefer to get married and be pregnant at about 25 years is the career consciousness. The women who are career conscious will do pregnancy planning late till the time they feel secure career wise.

Secondly, the women look for financial security. They are quite aware of the fact that raising a child is not easy as it requires financial support as well. So, they put off having a child till the time they are quite sure about their financial ability to meet the child’s requirement.

Fourthly, prescribing age-limits for getting pregnant may not be good in all cases. Some women may not be fertile even in 18-25 group and others might still be fertile till a later age.

Fifthly, some of the married women might not be emotionally stable after marriage. So, even if they are quite capable of getting pregnant at 18-25 years, they might be more mature to be emotionally stable at a later age.

Finally and most importantly, the body’s ability to cope up with the biological demands of pregnancy is better in this period than the earlier or later age groups. Though it might be technically possible to get pregnant earlier as well as later than the 25-35 year period, there are greater chances of having complications.

So, the basic parameters that define the ideal age for getting pregnant are: financial security, emotional stability and physical preparedness of the body to handle this phase. Breaking down the years into the days, women can also determine the best time (in terms of days) to get pregnant by determining their menstrual cycle, checking for the cervical mucus formation and monitoring the body basal temperature. Intercourse done 14 days prior to the beginning of menstrual cycle has greater chances of resulting in pregnancy. Similarly, raise in the basal temperature by about one degree would be a positive indicator for the best pregnancy time.