Week 33

Well folks, I might just squeak this in before midnight, which means that it will have gone up on Saturday, which is pretty darn close to on time, so I’m going to call that a victory.

We are on day 1 of our 2016 road trip extravaganza! Two weeks of driving through (mostly) Northern Ontario and a combination of camping in the Canadian shield and visiting family and friends. For those who are wondering: yes, I brought my pregnancy body pillow, but I won’t have a report on how it works for sleeping in the tent until after tomorrow night, so you’ll just have to wait for the week 34 update to find out how that went.

So, as it’s a bit early for reports on our road trip (which can currently be summed up as, we came, we saw, we ate food, we swam, we went to bed) I’ll just get you caught up on how the past week has been.

I have been struggling to get as much work done as I need to with the amount of energy I have in a day. It’s not as bad as it was back in yonder days of the first trimester, when just getting up and starting my day was enough of a drain that it required an immediate nap. But, napping is becoming a daily activity again, and I’m low on energy for the rest of the day if I miss out. And, with the amount of work I have, and the deadlines I’m currently working with (one self imposed, the other on contract) I need more hours in a day when I can be productive. But, I’m making it work for now, and hoping I can keep it going through the end of August.

Meanwhile, in the land of Speck: we had a midwife appointment on Wednesday, and Corey came too, because it was the appointment where we got the lowdown on all the details of giving birth in the birth center, and what that means compared to a hospital birth or home birth etc. Corey was just as drawn in by how beautiful the birth center is as I was, and our current plan A is that we will be birthing there. 

Of course we also had a normal midwife appointment as well, and Speck is doing well, seems to be head down (yay! fingers crossed that remains true), had a heartbeat of 135 (which is Speck’s normal), and my fundal height is 32 centimeters, so right on track. My blood pressure was normal (although a bit high for me, but I attribute that to the excitement of the appointment in which we get to hear all about giving birth in the birth center… also known as, SHIT GETTING REAL). As we were driving home from that appointment Corey said, “so, have you considered the possibility that you could go into early labor on this trip?” (Referring to our road trip.) 

Yep. Sure have. But I’m not about to keep us from having a nice vacation just on the off chance Speck decides to show up early. 

It continues to be difficult to get comfortable, sitting down in chairs that aren’t completely upright makes me feel like my stomach is inside my lungs and breathing and eating seem like activities that take up too much space. Walking still feels really good, and laying down is a close second. Sitting on my exercise ball feels awesome. I briefly considered trying to crush it into the car in order to bring it with us on this trip. Then I realized that was idiotic. Still, I thought about it.

Swimming feels great  and I was happy to do some more today, and looking forward to swimming again tomorrow. Yay swimming. All the swimming. So much swimming. May we swim every day for the next two weeks! 

Speck moves around a lot on any given day and seems to be working hard to drive elbows and knees into all the nooks and crannies of my uterus. I’m not sure how exciting that world is to explore, but Speck seems to be leaving no stone unturned. A+ for your sense of adventure Speck, now please kindly remove your hand from my cervix. Thank you. 

I get out of breath at the weirdest times. Standing up from the couch, for example, winds me terribly. While swimming for 750 meters or running 2km does nothing of the kind. Pregnancy is weird. 

Well, driving for 4 hours after not sleeping particularly well last night seems to be finally catching up with me, and my eyes are fluttering shut as I write this, so I think this is where I will leave you. Corey and I haven’t managed to squeeze in a bump shot yet, but I’ll try to get some pics of me in my pregnant bikini clad glory over the next few days to post in next week’s entry. For now I leave you with my Wednesday bump shot. 

Oh and PS. HICCOUGHS. All the damned time. Speck is a hiccough machine. Kinda cute. ;-)