warning: a rambling pregnancy update

So we're over halfway through this pregnancy now. If it's flying by for you, it's flying by even faster for me. I've confessed that I can hardly believe it's July already, so this revelation probably doesn't come as any surprise.

But seriously, was it already 4 months ago now that I was finally putting 2 and 2 together to realize that the not-going-away-nausea and exhaustion wasn't actually the stomach bug my children had had?

Guess so.

20 weeks already?!
(and, by the way, I swear my belly doubled in size yesterday, but I haven't taken a photo since then.)

By way of testimony and gratitude, I have to say that a large part of this pregnancy's Flying By nature has been that I have felt so good.

Really good.

And I am thankful beyond what words can say. I have had energy, I have had little sickness, I have had few days that have been a total wash, I have honestly enjoyed almost every minute. Each pregnancy prior to this one had gotten progressively harder on me and I think I was starting to think that it was just the way things would be. These past months have been such a gift to me, not just physically, but also emotionally.

Ultimately, I think it's just been God's mercy on me. But some things that I'm sure have helped:

Summer/exercise. By the end of the winter, I'm pale and listless and cooped-up-feeling and trying to remember when I last ate a good tomato. Maybe it's just me, but I think a lot of us fall in the camp of Feeling Better In The Summer. The fresh air and longer sunlight, the ease of and natural tendency toward staying active, the outdoor projects and fun, the accessibility and availability of organic and local produce-- I know these always make a difference in my general sense of well-being. The impact is simply that much more noticeable when my body is busy growing another human being.

Also, for the first time since before becoming a mom, I have been able to get out of the house almost daily to run and/or walk, whereas it used to get squeezed in whenever Daniel's unpredictable schedule would allow. There are advantages to my kids getting older and a smidgen more independent, and wow! what a very practical difference this has made in how I'm feeling.

My runs have morphed into walk-runs (I've always tried to take an interval approach to my running, so this is just more exaggerated)-- and this past week when I was out at noon and the sun was beating mercilessly down on me and the humidity levels were 70-100%, I strictly walked-- but it has all helped so much. During my first trimester, there were a lot of days that started yucky, but I knew that if I could just hang in there until my run, I would feel better. I'm not saying this would have worked in other pregnancies (and certainly not for all expectant mamas!), but it was a clear pattern this time around.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to keep it up right until the end. January and February are the toughest months for exercising outside (thanks to ice on the roads), but I'm due on December 3rd, so I should be okay. I'm sure my pace will continue to slow down as I get bigger (!), but my goal is to stay as limber and energetic as possible.

Food. For some miraculous reason, my cravings this time around have been much more on the health-food end of the spectrum. You think I kid when I say "miraculous," but if you knew the things I always crave when I'm pregnant (french fries, greasy burgers, sour patch kids, chinese buffet, etc.), you'd realize that I mean what I say. Previously, pregnancy has been 9 long months of eating what I know to eat when it isn't at all what I want to eat. Maybe it's the perfect timing of spring's arrival and all the bountiful healthy goodness available, but it has just been so much better this time around. I can't tell you how thankful I am to not be constantly battling myself on this issue.

Of course, there have been bowls of ice cream here and there and peach cobbler almost every Tuesday (yes, this pregnancy seems to also have delivered me from my many years of abstaining from peaches after one summer as a child when my mom ordered a scarring number of bushels of peaches!), but there's been a lot of wanting veggies and hummus, big bowls of fresh fruit, fresh-from-a-local-chicken-coop eggs, and more. I'm thankful, to say the least.

 

Iron. I tried my best to get a jump on my perpetual tendency toward anemia by firstly supplementing iron for quite a few months after Elliot's birth, and then by getting right into a vitamin and iron regimen about as soon as I knew I was pregnant. Some ladies might have the luxury of waiting to see how their iron levels are, but having been 6 for 6 with really bad anemia (my hemoglobin is usually between 8 and 9 when I go into labor), I didn't even bother with the Wait And See approach.

For the past 16 weeks I have been as faithfully as possible drinking floradix with breakfast and dinner and taking vitamins with lunch. My hemoglobin at 19 weeks gestation was a little over 11, so it does seem to be helping. I need to up it and keep at it if I'm going to have healthy levels by 40 weeks, but at least so far I haven't had the major energy slumps and general fatigue/weakness that I by now associate with pregnancy.

In pregnancy news: I had my first appointment with a midwife in Watertown who seems very excited and eager to help me VBAC once again. It's a shame to me that I have to drive 70 miles to find someone who agrees that a VBAC is not only safer in my situation but that it carries almost no more risks for me than it does for someone who has never had a cesarean, but at least she was there to be found. She is in a practice with 3 OBs who also do many VBACs every year. One of these OBs in particular came highly recommended from a local midwife (who only does non-VBAC homebirths) as a doctor who is very accommodating and naturally-minded, so that's encouraging.

The midwife felt that I was measuring small so she sent me for an ultrasound, thinking that we might be able to push the due date back and have that much more flexibility in terms of delivery dates at the end. I did try to tell her that I always measure small-- even at 42 weeks and just days before popping out my 10lb daughter I only measured 37cm-- but in my experience, every practitioner I've gone to has needed to see that for themselves. Sure enough, it was my most accurate-to-dates ultrasound I've ever had, with results perfectly confirming my December 3 due date.

It was a really amazing ultrasound, though. I got to see the baby waving, swallowing, moving his jaw up and down, flipping (lengthwise), and more. The miracle of life never gets old. This is a baby, a person, a soul. What a privilege to carry and cradle him within me, safely tucked away and nurtured by my very own life. When I think about every organ being formed, every finger and toe nail growing, every detail being put together, it amazes me that I don't have to contribute more to the process.

I am the lucky one.

Lest you get confused, I use "his" and "him" in the most generic of ways. We won't, once again, find out what we're having beforehand. Of course it's always tempting to know (what's better than finding out good news? well, finding out good news sooner, of course!), but I just can't give up the moment of climax when the baby is born and we really meet him/her for the first time. The eagerness to discover just who this baby is always helps me in those moments of labor transition when I'm pretty sure I could care less about anything other than being done or dying.

So we will be doing our best to come up with at least two baby name options. This gets harder and harder each time around, I have to say. It is such a privilege and ultimately joyous task, but it always feels very serious to me, too! Our baby's naming is up to us?

Coincidentally, every time I've given birth we've only had one name we really like and we've been fortunate enough to have the baby be the appropriate gender for the name. That said, I don't like to bank on that pattern continuing, so I really am doing my best to come up with a name for both boy and girl.

So far, I've got one girl name. Daniel doesn't like it.

Wish me luck.