One day, I was visiting one of my best friends who is a mother of two, and she caught me giving my side a little scratch with my thumbnail. She asked what I was using to moisturize my belly, and I told her just my regular-old lotion. “Oh, you need Mama Bee Belly Butter,” she insisted. “It’s made by Burt’s Bees.” I said I’d look for it and promptly forgot.

A few weeks later, she surprised me with a tub of the stuff, and I haven’t been nearly as itchy since. I guess the combination of cocoa, shea and jojoba butters really does the trick to keep a pregnant belly smooth and supple.

It’s natural, as most of Burt’s Bees products are, and fragrance-free, which I really appreciated in those earlier days when I was still nauseated by perfumey smells. The 6.5-ounce container will probably last me through the rest of my pregnancy and beyond, so I’d definitely say it’s worth the $13 it usually costs, even if I’d had to pay for it myself.

Win Free Belly Butter

Speaking of not paying for things yourself, how would you like to win your very own Belly Butter? We have three tubs to give away to three different lucky readers in the United States. You’ll have through Monday, Feb. 18, 2013 at 11PM EST, to enter. Winners will be notified by email.

This contest is over, and the winners are:

1. Cindi Simon
2. Jaymee Wolfe-Deblieck
3. Anaiah Younger

Note: We are NOT associated with Burt’s Bees and are not receiving any compensation for this contest.

Want to win $50?

This contest is over, but you can still win $50 by making a guess in the Baby Makin’ Mama’s Baby Pool. (Guesses accepted through March 18, 2013.)

Moving on…

First, I have to say, I love Katie Bower and her Bower Power Blog. Back in August, I was reading her blog and saw that she was expecting baby #2. So, I contacted her on Facebook and asked if she wanted to run a pool on WhatsInMyBelly.com for her readers. We offered to put up some prizes to make it a little more fun for everyone. Knowing how popular her blog was, I kind of expected her to either not respond at all or come back with a “sure… but what’s in it for me?” Instead, she responded and said she’d love to do it and was excited that her readers would have the chance to get some prizes.

Now, I expected this to be a little popular and drive some new visitors to our website (hopefully a few of which would be pregnant and start a pool of their own), but the response we’ve gotten has been well beyond our expectations.

We launched the first version of WhatsInMyBelly back in March and it’s now in version 2. The website was steadily growing as search engines began to pick it up, and other local media outlets like RichmondMom.com and Macaroni Kid Richmond began to mention us. We’re very thankful for any mention we get out there, but when Katie mentioned her baby pool at the end of this post, our traffic exploded immediately. So much so, that people trying to make a guess in her pool took the site down for about an hour until Daniel worked his magic and got things running again.

October has been a huge month for our website in general, but most of that is due to Katie’s baby pool, which now has 729 predictions. This surpasses my baby pool which held the lead at… 56 predictions (weak, I know). As you can see in the screenshot above, each time Katie mentioned her baby pool on our website, the traffic skyrocketed. Even after the mention we noticed about double the traffic we usually get on an single day.

So, to say the least, we love Katie Bower and her website, and we simply can’t do enough to thank her for running her baby pool on our website. 

There is Still A Little Time to Join the Bower Baby Pool

One of Katie Bower's Pregnancy photos. I took this from her blog, so click the photo to see her blog post with more photos.

Now I also have to mention, if you are reading this before midnight on Halloween, and you haven’t made a guess in her pool, we extended the original deadline to midnight on October 31, so head on over to her pool and make a prediction for your chance to win one of 3 Visa Gift Cards. When you’re done with that go bookmark her blog – it’s well worth the read.

Are You an Expectant Blogger?

So, with the huge success of the Bower Power Baby Pool, I think it goes without saying that we want to do this again. If you have a blog (don’t worry about how many readers you have) and you’re expecting, please e-mail me. We simply don’t have the cash to offer prizes for every pool out there, but if bloggers are using our website and linking to us, we’d like to thank you in some way. If anything, we can link back to your blog. So, get in touch with me and let me know if you have a website and you’re running a pool with us. Send me an e-mail: morgan@whatsinmybelly.com

One More Thing – Tell Us What You Want

This is a bit off topic for this blog post, but we are currently planning the next changes and upgrades to WhatsInMyBelly.com and we want to know what you, the users, would like to see improved on the website. If you have a second, please take this survey. The only required fields are the ones where you pick the new features you like the most, so it will literally only take you a few seconds to do it. Your answers will help us decide what to add to the website next.

My son Kyler is 2 1/2 now. He’s the one who caused the initial spark of panic inspiration.

Kyler shortly after he was born in April 2010

Me holding Kyler the day he was born. I probably should have gotten a haircut knowing that a baby was due soon.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the full website online back then, in fact, I didn’t even get started, so we didn’t get to use this site when he was born. Instead, I created and ran a baby pool with good ol’ pen and paper and posted the details on our family website: The Porters Online. Yeah, it was hard life back in the day. We had to run baby pools by hand. (I wish I had this baby pool template back then.)

So, I’ll skip forward to today. Kyler is now a handfull and without the hours of help from Daniel, this site would still not exist.

Kyler Porter Running (photo by Jessica Oriole Salay of Oriole Photography)

Me and family before Baby #2 arrived (photo by Jessica Oriole Salay of Oriole Photography)

Today, Kyler is really keeping us on our toes.

Kyler on his four-wheeler. Yes, his sun glasses are upside down. That's how he rolls.

An introduction of Kyler wouldn't be complete without this photo of him learning to cheer for the Washington Redskins.

So, that’s my oldest, and the original inspiration behind this website. But, like I said, the website didn’t get off the ground until just this year. Early in 2012, my wife, Ashley, surprised me again with the announcement that we would become a family of four. We had talked quite a bit about how many kids we wanted and came to the conclusion that if #2 was a girl, that would be it for us. With that thought in mind, I decided that I would do whatever had to be done to get the baby pool website off the ground. With a lot of hard work, and quite a few late nights (bonus: training for the newborn soon to come), Daniel, Dan and I got the website launched by March (the first version, at least). That gave me plenty of time to use it before my daughter, Ella, was born in September.

So here she is, Ms. Ella Porter: (Born one month ago today. Happy 1 month, Ella!)

Ella the day she was born

Ella and my beautiful wife, Ashley

Ella Sleeping

Ella posing in her sleep the day she was born. Future model?

Ella Sleeping in the Pack-and-Play

Ella Sleeping.

So I just noticed that all but one of these photos is of her sleeping. I swear she isn’t sleeping 24/7. I guess when she’s awake we’re a little too busy to grab the camera? (Note to self: get more photos of Ella with her eyes open.)

Well there they are. The 2 kids who got the ball rolling on this baby pool website. And I guess we’ll be adding child #3 to the list soon… NO, not mine! WhatsInMyBelly.com, co-founder, Daniel Reibsamen and his wife Emily are expecting their first child in early December. If you’re reading this before the pool closes, go ahead and make a prediction. He seems to think he can beat Ella’s pool of 56 guesses. With 2 months to go and only down by 6 guesses, I highly expect their pool will becoming the biggest yet. It won’t be long before we’ll introduce you to the third inspiration for WhatsInMyBelly.com. Congratulations Daniel and Emily!