maternity belt

How to put on a Maternity Support Belt

Pregnancy, , Leave a comment

1) Fasten the upper tummy strap by lightly stretching top strap over and velcro it to other end towards the top of your stomach.

2) Fasten the Abdominal Support Pad under your belly.  The belt is fastened with the Velcro on each end.

3) Position the Abdominal Support Pad as low on your abdomen as possible, but not so low it is touched by your legs when you walk.

4) Attach the belt to itself to lock in place.

Notes:

Your maternity support is made of elastic, which means as your baby grows, the support belt will expand by velcroing the ends for proper fit.

Washing your Maternity Support Belt

Ideally if you have the patience, you will want to hand wash your maternity support belt in your bathroom sink in cold water with a little bit of detergent then hang it over your curtain rod to dry.  I, however, have never hand washed anything in my life so I stuff the girdle into a garment bag (or else the Velcro will snag on other items in the wash) and let it go through a normal cycle.  I still let it air dry overnight, so it’s ready to go when I get up.

Maybe this decreases the lifespan of your belt or girdle but it’s a time/cost evaluation.  Plus, in my experience, hand washing never fully de-stinkifies anything.  My girdle held up fine and is ready for another pregnancy, maybe two!  Use your judgment.

10 Ways to Relieve Pain from Pregnancy Caused by the Sciatic Nerve

Mother's Health, Pregnancy, , , 2 Comments

Ouch!

The largest nerve in your body is the sciatic nerve. It’s the one that brings the feeling to the backs of your legs and the bottoms of your feet. When it hurts, it hurts! If you’re pregnant, it’ll act up because it runs along under the uterus and along the spine before it can get to your legs. As your baby grows it puts pressure on the nerve and …ZING! OWIE!

Tingling/numbness like pins and needles, burning, radiating, shooting pains in the back or rear.  Sometimes I can’t even take a walk because it shows up wrapping around my left leg usually. It’s not all the time though thank God. For some women, it sticks around even after birth!

Here’s a 10 ways to relieve yourself of the pain.

1- Take a bath.  The warm water helps sooth and just feels good.

2- Lie on your left side & apply hot and cold temperature to the painful area.  If a heating pad doesn’t stay, do what I did and tie it on with a dish cloth or towel.

3- Pelvic tilts are nice! Yogic stretches if that’s your bag. Try tilting your pelvis forward until you’ve gone as far as you can go comfortably. Hold it for a count of 10, release, repeat as long as you feel the need. You won’t look especially attractive, but I’ve done this in public before!

4- Avoid heavy lifting if at all possible, I’ve got a husband for that! I find that even my library ladies are more than willing to take my books out to my car for me. Sweet ladies!

5- Don’t stand for long stretches of time.  Of course it’s easier said than done, I must have a chair because if I sit on the ground I sometimes can’t get up on my own!  Luckily it’s more hilarious than embarrassing.

6- Wear your maternity belt. I’ve got one from Medela that I found at a garage sale but, to be honest, it mostly just holds up my pants (which I need!), so it’s sometimes annoying.

7- Alternative medicine?  My mother is an acupuncturist; I don’t care for needles at all but in the past it’s helped take away the pain. Personally I prefer massage! Though if you schedule acupuncture/ massage for yourself make absolutely sure they’re qualified to work on a pregnant person.  There is a difference!

8- Spend some time in a pool, just floating around.

9- Ask your doctor about non-steroid anti-inflammatory medications for the pain.

10- Take a nap.  Resting is important in any case and spending time resting those muscles is a good thing.

What is Pelvic Girdle Pain?

Mother's Health, Pregnancy, , 5 Comments

Pelvic girdle pain is caused by the widening of joints in your pelvis by the hormone Relaxin in preparation for passing an infant.  The extra added size and weight of your stomach as your little one gets bigger puts stress on your body.  You can feel it as a minor ache in that area or, if more extreme, it can be a painful searing feeling that covers your hips, back, and stomach.

SkeletonWho gets Pelvic Girdle Pain?

It’s said that about 80% of pregnant woman get Pelvic Girdle Pain during their pregnancy.  The majority of these aches come to a head in the third trimester when there is the most pressure on the pelvis.

This is not, however, the only time when you can experience it.  I started feeling it during my second trimester while packing up my house to move.

Other names

Pelvic girdle pain is different from Symphysis Pubic Dysfunction in that the discomfort is more generalized and isn’t necessarily caused by the loosening of ligaments.

You might also want to read my article on how I have Pelvic Girdle Pain

Pelvic Girdle Pain: I have it, how about you?

Update, , Comments Off on Pelvic Girdle Pain: I have it, how about you?

My husband and I finished moving into our new house at the end of July, which is hard for a pregnant chick! So when I started feeling a little groin pain after the move was over I wasn’t concerned about it, bound to happen, it’ll heal after a couple days, right? But then it just kept going.

Pelvic Girdle painAt first it felt like I’d gone on a twenty-mile bike ride on a reeaaally hard seat. And if you’ve ever gone too long on an old seat you don’t soon forget it! I was feeling kinda, for lack of a better term, saddle sore. And though it’s not exactly an emergency it is uncomfortable, and as I have about another week until my next doctor’s appointment, I did what millions of pregnant people do, self-diagnose over the internet.

On a side note, Pelvic Girdle sounds like underwear my grandmother used to wear in the ‘40s or something…

I’ve always imagined my pelvis as one solid hunk o’ bone but, no surprise, I’m wrong! There are three joints in there (the pubic symphysis, and two sacroiliacs) that are there, with help from the hormone Relaxin, to allow my pelvis some extra room for the baby to pass. This extra room is more than I’m used to dealing with though and that’s what’s keeping the discomfort so consistent, especially when I have to roll in and out of bed for one of my many nighttime bathroom visits.

Pelvic Girdle Pain is associated with first pregnancies, previous back pain (my poor L5!), strenuous work (the move!) and the fact that my little bundle o’ joy seems to be more comfortable when he’s making me less comfortable. Jerk.

Also because of the Pelvic Girdle Pain I’ve begun waddling which, depending on how you look at it, is either a cute byproduct of pregnancy.  Or an opening for your friends and co-workers to tell you that you look like Danny Devito’s Penguin. Jerks.

The only recourse I have is to avoid unnecessary stairs, roll like a log when I get in and out of bed, and to go nowhere without my husband to do my grunt work for me. As things stand, it looks like I’m stuck in this state of constant groin-ache until somewhere after I give birth to my little jer- uh… miracle.

Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction Relief

Pregnancy, , 1 Comment

Going through the pain of being pregnant is driving me a little crazy. For some reason knowing the science helps me feel a little better.

For me, the biggest issue is pelvic girdle pain.

The cause of Pelvic Girdle Pain is the pregnancy hormone Relaxin. This hormone causes the ‘relaxation’ of pelvic joints and ligaments allowing the baby to pass from the womb into the world.

Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction and Pelvic Girdle P are similar. So similar that the terms are often used interchangeably. The pubic symphysis is part of PGP. It just happens to be ‘localized’ to the pubic symphysis at the front of the pelvis.

Wikipedia describes it as:

It is a condition that causes excessive movement of the pubic symphysis, either anterior or lateral, as well as associated pain, possibly because of a misalignment of thepelvis. SPD is a dysfunction that is associated with pelvic girdle pain and the names are often used interchangeably.

from wikipedia

Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction Relief Tips

  • Number one, Relax! Rest as much as you can. Now’s the time to wallow in a stack of books or catch up on your daytime TV, guilt-free!
  • Try to limit movements that place stress on the symphysis pubis.
  • When you get out of bed (if you don’t do it already) roll out with both legs together.
  • When you go upstairs, go up one step at a time, like you did when you were little.
  • See your doctor get proper diagnose and treatment for Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction.
  • Ask your doctor to prescribe you pregnancy safe painkillers
  • You can wear a pelvic support garment (like a belt or girdle). You can also try crutches.
  • Visiting an occupational therapist is helpful if you have trouble with daily tasks.
  • Ask your doctor for exercises to help. These can benefit the muscles supporting the joints and help with posture while pregnant.
  • You may consider alternative treatments. These include chiropractic, acupuncture, massage, etc.

In most cases, it takes about half a year to recover fully after birth. If the pain continues past six months, consult your doctor for further treatment.

This scares me a little, but here is to hoping for a quick relief.

Family Working on our Comic Book

Niche Site Journal for January 2013

Niche Site Journal, on maternity belts, , , , , , , , , 22 Comments

My last post on my Niche Site experience was almost three months ago. A lot has happened since then not relating to the Niche Site.

As many of you know, my wife gave birth to our first child and my wife, we ran a successful Kickstarter campaign and printed our first comic book.

In other words, we have been insanely busy.

This is why I hope to master niche sites. The opportunity to work on my art and spend time with my family without worrying about money would be a dream come true. That is why I am trying to make this work and build a passive income portfolio.

Quick Lesson

Make sure you know why you want to make passive income through Niche Sites. It makes the long hours and lonely nights more bearable.

Thank You to

All of you commented on Niche Site Journal articles and had shown me people are interested in these posts. For that, I wanted to thank you and hope you share your Niche Site experiences with me.

UPDATE:
I moved all the articles and links to this new site away from jasonloveslife.com. This means everyone’s comment is still on the other site because I am not moving them over manually.

The Numbers

Time Breakdown: 0 Hours (Total to date: 111 hours)

I did no work on the site. I did check the traffic numbers every once in awhile and updated the site to the current WordPress version once, but nothing that took more than 5 minutes.

Costs: $0 (Total to date $351.30)

Spent no money.

Search Engine Ranking:

The Keyword I am trying to rank for is “Maternity Belts”. I used Market Samurai to get the following numbers.

Market Samurai image

From Market Samurai Ranking Checker

I don’t know what to make of these figures.  It looks like my position with Google was doing well. It got as low as 17th position and then jumped back up to the 30′s. This could be because I wasn’t adding content, or some other sites have continued to work at SEO and I stopped. I am not sure.

For some reason, I am not ranked with Bing or Yahoo, but on Jan 17th I jumped to the 9th spot in Bing, then disappeared. Not sure if Market Samurai has a glitch or the search engines just do weird stuff? I am still trying to figure it all out.

Traffic:

Here are my traffic numbers (from Google Analytic) for the site from Nov 1, 2012 – Jan 31, 2013.

  • Visits: 81
  • Unique Visitors: 49
  • Pageviews: 318
  • Pages / Visit: 3.93
  • Avg. Visit Duration: 00:06:22
  • Bounce Rate: 37.04%
  • % New Visits: 56.79%

Chart from Analytics

Nov 1, 2012 – Jan 31, 2013

Traffic Source

Traffic Source

Traffic Sources from Nov 1, 2012 – Jan 31, 2013

Income: about $.09 (Total to date $1.59)

Since I last posted my numbers (November 17, 2012), I made $.09.

Thoughts

Why no income?

As it goes in this experiment, I have put in a total of $351.30 and 111 hours into this project have a total revenue of $1.59.

Even though I am disappointed with these numbers, I am not giving up on the concept of niche sites.  I did make some income with only getting 1 or 2 visitors a day. If I could get 100′s or 1000′s visitors a day, my return would start being worth the effort.

Also, I have learned a lot from my experience with my Kickstarter campaign on how to utilize social media to get traffic to my site.

Did my Backlinking Strategy Fail?

I wanted to address the fact that I used a backlinking strategy but still have a low ranking in Google and no ranking on other search engines. This does not mean the plan does not work because I never finished implementing the strategy.

I put in Anchor Layer with links from sites I created on 3rd party sites (View list in week 8), but I never sent mass links to the Anchor Layer. To see if this strategy works, I need to start getting a mass number of backlinks to those 3rd party sites.

My Future Niche Site Journals

I am moving all my old articles from JasonLovesLife.com to NichSiteJoural.com (UPDATE: now they are part of compulsivecreative.com). I have already purchased a new domain and will need time to set it up and start posting.  I will update this site with the new location, and I hope all of you who are following my Niche Site Journal will make the transition over there (UPDATE: I’m glad you made it to the new site).

I’ve also been asked a lot about what the web address is for the niche site I am working on.

You can check it out at www.onmaternitybelts.com (now part of compulsivecreative.com).
Let me know what you think of the site in the comment section.

My Niche Site Journal:

Party Time

Week 8 – We made $

Niche Site Journal, on maternity belts, , , , , , , , , , , , , 13 Comments

We made some money in our Last Week of the Journal & I talk a little about “the best spinner”.

A crazy week as usual.  It was hard to find the time to put in my 14 hours this week.  My wife is due to give birth any day, we are spending a lot of time on creating our comic book (Madman of Magic), my laptop died, the family is planning to come to see the baby, I signed a new contract for putting on animation workshops for the local schools, and …. Well that is all I remember, but I did find 14 hours to work on the Niche Site.

WE MADE MONEY

Still in the Middle of my BackLinking Strategy

I have figured out that attempting a backlinking strategy for the first time is very time-consuming.

This tool makes it a little easier (it is free):
http://www.my4hrworkweek.com/ultimate-backlink-tracker/

Some Notes on article directories:

These are links for my backlinking strategy.  If you don’t know what that is, please read my post from Week 5: Back links and Article Marketing

Sites that no longer work or cost money

  • Article Dashboard now charges money.
  • Article Blast said my account hasn’t been approved yet.  It has been a few weeks, and I still haven’t heard anything.  I did have to submit examples of work, which is cool, but you think they would have contacted me by now.
  • Article Alley said the email provider (gmail) was blocked.  This is weird to block Google email accounts, but I am not opening or using one of my websites accounts for a backlinking strategy.
  • Buzzle said external links were no longer allowed in Articles.  I signed up and was about to post when I read this.
  • The Free Library does not accept new articles at this time.
  • iSnare says you can post an article and have your website on the article, but if you want it to link back (be clickable), then it costs money.  I put one article on there just for the heck of it since I went through the trouble of opening an account, but I will not be posting anymore.

Sites I did use

The Best Spinner

The only spinning software I have ever used is “The Best Spinner”.  I am wondering if it was a bad choice.  I figure the best way to help you decide if you want to purchase the same one is to give positive and negative things about it.

Problems:

  • I have a hard time doing some of the more complicated spinning features.  For example, if I want to highlight a word to spin, it has issues letting me highlight exactly what I want to highlight.  Sometimes it does half the word or takes away the space between words.
  • CRASHES I have had the software crash on me more than once.  After finishing everything, I try to do save and it says it can not do it because of an error.  Luckily it will usually allows me to try again later.
  • Mistakes with brackets.  After spinning an article, there was an error with a bracket and the article would not spin correctly.  I had to go through and find the mistake.  My guess is the original mistake was probably my fault, but I wonder why the program couldn’t tell me where the mistake was or give me an idea of where I should be looking for the missing bracket.
  • Have to pay yearly for the product (or as they call it, the service).

Cool Features:

  • There are a lot of cool features I have yet to try.  One of these features is the fact the software has more capabilities than just spinning.
  • You can see how similar spun articles are to each other (gives a percentage).
  • Able to access the software from different computers.
  • Not too complicated to use (I wouldn’t call it easy either).

Automate Article Synonyms Selection

I did try the function that automatically finds and chooses synonyms for article spinning.  It didn’t work for me.  When I published the articles I found mistake after mistake. I found so many errors that I ended up rewriting most of the article.
If you are writing a very basic article then this function might work.  If you can get it to work, it would save you at least 40 minutes or more on a 500-word article… That would be some great time savings!

Final thoughts on “the best spinner” software

I don’t plan to buy any other spinning software in the future since I don’t do enough article marketing to make it worth it.  I will stick with this program for awhile or at least until my year subscription is up.

Week # 8 Results

Still working on Back linking

We spent another week setting up backlinks as discussed in our backlinking strategy (read here).  We are putting up more articles than what is required, but I figure we would rather have too many than not enough.

Income: about $1.50 (Total to date $1.50)

We finally made our first dollar this month.  This is really cool but a little sad that it took 8 weeks to get there.  Maybe if I worked on more niche site I would be able to pull in money faster.  The cool thing is that traffic is low and I am not ranked yet, so when these things finally happen I hope it will mean a steady income.

Google Ranking: Not Ranked Yet

Number of page views: 37 in a week (from November 10 – November 16)

This sounds bad because it is lower than last week, but it is, in fact, good news.  I haven’t been on the site as much and, therefore, these are all legitimate views as opposed to me checking the website links.

Costs: $0 (Total to date $346.30)

We did not spend any money this week.  Always a good thing!

Time Breakdown: 16 Hours (Total to date: 111 hours)

I put in two extra hours because I know I missed a few in the past weeks.

Leah’s Time (0 hours):

  • 0 hours.  Leah has been working the entire week on our comic book, Madman of Magic and pregnancy stuff.

Jason’s Time (16 hours):

  • 1 hour going over how to use “The Best Spinner” and the ways other people use it.
  • 15 hours spinning and posting articles.
    I was unable to keep close track of my time because of logistics, but I do know I spent approximately six hours spinning 4 articles (3 around 500 words and 1 around 1200 words).  With the rest of the time spent publishing articles.  I posted at least one article and almost all of the sites listed above, but on a few of them I didn’t get time to post anything.

Plan

Since this was the last week of the Niche Site Journal I do not have any concrete plans set up for the Niche Site Journal.  I do realize I still need to finish the backlinking strategy, touch up the website, add the rest of the articles Leah wrote, and optimize the locations of the Google AdWord ads.  I will finish these tasks, but I will have to do it in between working on the comic book and taking care of a new baby.

Lesson:  The Niche Site Journal Lives on!

I will be completing those tasks mentioned in the “plan” section of this article, but instead of posting on a weekly basis, I will be posting monthly updates.  At the same time I expect to start the second site of the niche site journal (as mentioned in Week 0: Explaining Niche Site Journal).  I will be posting those updates on a weekly basis, but before that starts I will be taking a few weeks off to get my life back in order.

I want to say thanks for following my progress and remember that even though this is the last week of this Niche Site Journal, I will be continuing to work on the site and continue to update you on my progress.

My Niche Site Journal:

Week 7 – Still working on Back linking Strategy

Niche Site Journal, on maternity belts, , , , , , , , , , , 9 Comments

We’re still puttering along with the niche site and the back linking strategy.

To be honest, I will be glad when it is all over.  I guess this is why everyone says choose something you love.  While I don’t mind doing articles on pregnancy and pregnant woman’s health, it is hard for me to get excited about it.

The only thing keeping me working on this niche site is:

  • I want to see if the strategies for niche sites work.
  • I enjoy learning about putting up niche sites.
  • I feel that my Niche Site Journal readers (you) hold me accountable to see this through to the end.

Find out “What’s my Ranking.”

I did a search on YouTube for “How to find Google keyword ranking” and who’s video should appear?  That’s right, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income (the dude really is everywhere).

I have Market Samurai, so I am using that software to figure it out.

Here is the video:

Week # 7 Results

Still working on Backlinking

We spent the week setting up back links as discussed in our back linking strategy (read here).

Income: $0 (Total to date $0)

No Income yet.

Google Ranking:

According to Market Samurai, I am not ranked in any of the search engines.

I do, however, have pages indexed by all the search engines.

Indexed Pages in Search Engines

 

What you see here is that my number of indexed pages has gone down.  This confused me as I have been adding pages, not taking them away.  I realized late that this had to do with my hosting and domain status.

I have purchased two domains for this niche site. One is a plural version that sounds more natural and the other is the single tense version that sounds less natural (but has higher search volume).  Originally I had the site set so if you went on either, they both showed the same site.  Later I realized this could be confusing, so I changed it so that if you put in the singular name (doesn’t have an “s” at the end) it redirects the person to the web address with the “s” at the end.

Google was indexing these websites as two separate sites.  Meaning instead of seeing 10 pages, it was seeing 20 pages.  I hope this doesn’t hurt my ability to rank in anyway, but I guess we will have to wait and find out.

Number of page views: 52 in a week (from October 28 – November 3)

This is higher than I expected to get, which I guess is a good sign.  The problem is that the 52 views came from 6 unique users.  My guess is 3 of those unique users are me (my desktop, laptop, and smartphone).  I did set the analytics plug-in not to include me in the data, but I am guessing it still counted me towards the page views.

Costs: $0 (Total to date $346.30)

We did not spend any money this week.

Time Breakdown: 14 Hours (Total to date 95 hours)

Leah’s Time (0 hours):

  • 0 hours.  Leah has been working the entire week on our comic book, Madman of Magic.

Jason’s Time (14 hours):

  • 2 hours editing, adjusting, and publishing articles on the niche site
  • 1 hour learning how to use the best spinner (I am still having problems)
  • 3 hours spinning my first article.  I did it by sentence and by individual words.  Next time I will just being doing it word by word because when I added alternatives for every sentence, it doubled the number of words I had to go through.
  • 4.5 hours setting up and publishing articles on article directories.  I got two up on most of them.  WARNING: some of the article directories I tried no longer work.  Try to get an updated list if possible.  Another issue I had was that on two separate occasions I made about 30 minutes of changes on an article in an article directory site, hit a button without saving it on my computer and lost all that work.
  • 1.5 hours setting up the free blog site
  • 2 hours Setting up Web 2.0 sites

Plan

Only one week left and a lot to do.

  • Week 8: Set up all “anchor layer” accounts, spin articles, and place the spun articles on those accounts.  If I still have time, I will build mass back links to anchor sites (I still need to research the best way to do this).

Lesson:  Backlinking takes a long time

It turns out back linking takes a long time from scratch.  The beauty and unfair advantage of my next niche site is that I already have accounts with all the sites needed for the back linking strategy.

Here are a few tips I have put together to help you in the process and allowing you to get through all this faster than me.

  • Make sure to edit an article on a word document and then paste it into the website you are posting on.  I lost about an hour and a half re-doing articles I had already edited and adjusted because the website didn’t save it.
  • Practice with your spinning software.  I use The Best Spinner and while it is user friends, it is easy to make mistakes.  If you misplace the location of just one “{” tag, you will find yourself going slowly insane as you try to fix it by hand.
  • Find an updated list of article directories (Here is where I posted mine).
  • Have a plan and don’t keep doing research every few days.  Pick a system and try it!
I hope this helps.  One more week left and then I am taking a short break before launching the next niche site… Leah (my wife) and I are working on a comic book (madman of magic) so we will be focusing more of our attention on that until the second week of December (2012).

Sharing time

I am wondering what everyone else is using to get higher in the Google Search Ranks.  If you want to join in the SEO discussion, leave your comments below.