Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Week 30

Well, this post is late, but then, I warned that it would be in last week's post. After all, I was fairly certain that volunteering for the Winnipeg Folk Festival combined with hosting my wonderful cousin for the weekend would ultimately result in not having time to blog. (Though to be fair to my cousin, volunteering alone would have led to me not having time to blog over the weekend.)

Yesterday was spent recovering from the Folk Festival and today... well, today was spent trying to express in the written word why the Black Lives Matter movement is important. After writing that fairly lengthy blog post, I didn't have the energy to get this one written and up by the end of the day. So, it will ultimately be past midnight by the time I finish this, and I may delay posting it until tomorrow (Wednesday) just to avoid the middle of the night death knell that results in posting something when the rest of the world is asleep.

So, a recap of week 30 (possibly squeaking into week 31 because Folk Fest went from Thursday to Sunday and leaving parts of it out to cover next week just seems silly)...

Well, I know we usually save the bump photos for later, but Corey took last week's bump picture after I'd posted last week's blog entry, so we'll go ahead and start with that. This was taken last Monday:


The angle is a bit weird because Corey was standing in a different location than usual (closer than he usually stands and thus had to angle the camera in order to get me fully in the shot) but BONUS: Artemis decided to stick her adorable mug in the shot. You're welcome. ;-)

So, Monday was the day after we returned from our adventures four hours north of Winnipeg in a land of no internet (blissful if you ask me), enough mosquitos to fell a moose (substantially less on the blissful side of things), and three hours of tubing down a slow shallow river with assorted beverages and good company (back to blissful since I stocked virgin mojitos and managed to only lightly sunburn the bump rather than full-on extra-crispy myself). In other words it was overall a good time and while I found sleeping in a bed that is not the one I'm used to far less comfortable than usual (once upon a time I could sleep anywhere without complaint) I enjoyed getting away from the city for a few days. 

We returned home Sunday evening, and I spent that evening and the following Monday promoting the end of a four day sale on my book and compulsively checking sales stats and rankings. Tuesday was largely spent updating my Patreon campaign with new chapters of my Victoria Marmot webserial, as well as dealing with the tail end of the aforementioned sale. Wednesday was spent in a frenzy of cleaning in preparation for the arrival of my cousin and then spent hanging out with said cousin. 

Thursday through Sunday were spent attending/volunteering at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. So, here's where things get a little crazy. Folk Fest is pretty tiring even when I'm not pregnant. This is my third year volunteering and between spending all day in the sun, being on my feet for each of my 10 hour shifts (only two of those- so not terrible), and not getting home in time to get enough sleep before getting up to do it all again the next day, I find the weekend wonderful but exhausting. This year I added extra sleep deprivation due to pregnancy discomfort to the mix, just for funsies, and the result was a slight reduction in my overall enjoyment of the festival. I was a fair bit grumpier by the end of the weekend than I would usually be, and quite a bit less willing to stay past the end of my shift than I normally would have been. (Most of which would normally be soothed by a beer or two at the end of the night, but that wasn't really an option this time around...)

Still, I had some wonderful moments of enjoying music, spending time with friends, and meeting some favorite musicians to make the weekend overall a lovely experience, plus I got to share the whole thing with my cousin, which was truly lovely. Speck also seemed to enjoy the music, and took quite a few opportunities to 'dance.' Seriously, Speck was moving rhythmically to the music from what I could tell, but I'm willing to admit it might have just been my perception of the movement. 

Ok. So all of that was basically just a long way of saying being pregnant made me grumpier and less tolerant of shenanigans over the weekend, but I still managed to have enough energy for all of the running around I did including the day where, according to the pedometer in my phone, I walked over 15km (that's over 9 miles) in the course of the day. And, oddity of oddities, aside from having sore feet at the end of my 10 hour shifts (spent entirely standing and walking) I felt much better all weekend for all the walking I did than I have on weekends when I've been more sedentary. Walking and staying busy is still making me feel way better than not doing so, and that makes me happy.

So yay for still having energy so far in the third trimester! Of course, the follow up to that is that yesterday, after sleeping for eight hours and then taking my cousin to the airport in the afternoon, I came home and slept for another two hours, and then slept for another eight hours last night. 

Today, I didn't have a nap, but I did manage to eat more than half of an extra large pizza this afternoon. 



And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that over the past few weeks I have felt a lot of strange sluggishness and difficulty catching my breath when sitting in a chair or reclined on the couch. Luckily, lying flat still feels good, as does sitting on the exercise ball, as does standing up and/or walking... but resting is getting hard to do without getting fully horizontal.

Running was on hold during family visit/Folk Fest time, but I hope to start up again this week if the weather decides to cooperate (and maybe even if it doesn't). 

I'm struggling to jump to paragraphs with any sort of reasonable segue at this point (so much so that I gave up last night and decided to finish this today- Wednesday) so I'm just going to say fuck it and start the next paragraph without any introduction, and probably all subsequent paragraphs as well. Please forgive my seeming non sequiturs. 

So lately Speck has been moving a ton more than in the second trimester. Instead of being active for 30 minutes a couple of times a day (and particularly at night) I can now feel Speck move a bit a few times an hour or more. Which leads to constant reminders that Speck is there, and also to me learning more about Speck's personality, especially as Speck seems to react to certain stimuli outside the womb. For example, Speck totally seemed to be dancing during parts of folk fest, which seems about right considering Speck's parentage. Also, Speck pushes back at anything that prods her/him, such as doppler wands and midwife hands that are trying to assess how Speck is doing. All of this gives me small insights into what Speck's personality might be, and it makes this whole creating a new human things seem more real than it ever has. This has led to two very mixed emotions on my part:

1. Speck is totally a person in my mind who I already care about quite a bit and talk to periodically and... if anything were to happen to Speck I would be completely devastated. I have definitely bonded with this kiddo already.

2. HOLY FUCKING SHITBALLS WE MADE A NEW PERSON THAT WE'RE GOING TO MEET IN 9.5 WEEKS!!!!!! I AM SO NOT READY TO BE A PARENT. HOLY SHIT, HOLY SHIT, HOLY SHIT WHAT HAVE WE GOTTEN OURSELVES INTO!?!?!?!?!?

Ahem. In other words, I'm torn between already feeling pretty attached to Speck and feeling like I might have ruined my own life, and nothing will ever be the same.

Now don't worry. Feeling number one trumps feeling number two for most moments of any given day, but I just want to make it clear that even this far along I am still feeling major moments of doubt and concern. I have decided that this is perfectly fine because a. I'm not spiraling into a pool of negative thinking, I'm just having brief moments of "oh holy crap!" and b. I don't think I'm alone in this. So, don't worry you don't have to write in with your sunshine and unicorns and tell me that "having a baby is something you'll never regret," yadda yadda. I get it. Intellectually, I understand, and I even have moments of thinking how cool this is rather than wondering what kind of drugs we were taking that made us think it was a good idea, so I think it'll all be fine. But read the fine print at the top of this blog again: there will be HONESTY. So there you have it. If I'm 100% honest, which I'm a fan of, I admit to still having moments of severe doubt. They tend to be brief, but they are totally there and I am willing to admit to them.

Mostly though, I think this is just going to be the next big adventure and probably a pretty cool one for the most part. 

To that end, I had a moment when my cousin was visiting where I for some reason got excited about cloth diapering supplies and I decided to go through the stuff that I bought at the sale a while back. Turns out we got a pretty good cloth diaper stash and when I went through it I may or may not have practiced folding a "pre-fold" diaper to fit a baby. My cousin wanted to take a picture me doing so, but I wouldn't let her. Shh.... don't tell anyone. I have a rep to keep. 

And in the final bit of randomness this week I've realized that it's time to buy some shit. I have made a list of the things we'll actually need for Speck's arrival and it's about time to pick some of that up so that we're not adding that to the shit we have to do when Speck is already here and we're just trying to stay above water with sleep deprivation and "Holy shit, did I just kill the baby? I think I killed the baby. Is it breathing? I didn't even touch it. How did it die?" *baby cries* "Oh thank, Gwen! The baby is still alive."

So we will be heading out to the local gently used baby items store sometime soonish to get a few items, or at least to start pricing things out. 

And I think that's it for this week. Chances are good that the week 31 post will happen on Saturday or Sunday, since Friday is probably a little too soon after this one.

Here is this week's bumpie, taken on Monday (and a bonus front facing shot just 'cause):





2 comments:

  1. I have so many things I'd like to say, and I'm going to listicle them.

    1. You are adorable and your hair makes me all sorts of jealous because it rocks.

    2. I am highly irritable all the time and I eat whole pizzas by myself with alarming regularity. This does not bode well for my potential (far-off) future as a preggo.

    3. I appreciate your honesty - like a shipwreck survivor appreciates a buoyant piece of wreckage to cling to. I am horrified by the idea of pregnancy, I actually experience nightmares over it. I don't know if I'll ever decide to reproduce but if I do, it's nice to know that a perfectly sane and great person like yourself has these thoughts occasionally too. ;) Yay for the anti-glitter brigade!

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    Replies
    1. 1. Ha! Thank you. My hair is... well, just weird these days, but I love that you think it rocks.
      2. (This may be pretty true of my non-pregnant day to day self as well, but "shhh... we're pretending it's pregnancy." ;-)
      3. Woot! Honesty for the win! As I hope I made clear from the very first post, this blog is all about the doubters.

      Thanks Jess!

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