32 Weeks

Right now I am in the middle of my 32nd week. I still have 7 more weeks to go and to tell you the truth I am getting tired of being pregnant. No, I do not want the baby to be born NOW because that would mean him having to spend time in the n.i.c.u., and that is  scary thought; but I am certainly not having anymore fun.

My body has encountered more changes than I remember with my first pregnancy. I thought that this time around since I was fit (which I was not when I was pregnant with Megan), I would be able to keep to my exercise schedule, and keep my body in decent enough shape…. I am afraid my body had other plans.

Midway through the pregnancy the doctor discovered I had this condition called Placenta Previa, which can be explained as “the placenta (baby’s main source of food and nutrients while in utero) was covering the birth canal”. What did this mean? With the pressure the growing baby was putting on it I was more prone to bleeding and could cause some serious complications; including the need to schedule a c-section.  Due to the positioning of the placenta (won’t go into much detail) the doctor said that I had a good chance the condition would resolve itself later in pregnancy and I would be able to have a vaginal delivery. If the placenta did not move, there was a good chance I would have to be put on bed rest. After getting that prognosis and being told I could still continue to work out but at a much “easier” intensity, I decided to cut out running from the repertoire and replaced it with the elliptical at the gym.

For those of you who haven’t done the cardio machines at the gym in a long time, let me just say BO-RING. But I was determined to keep at it; I needed to keep exercising. I would hit the gym twice a week, do a session of 30 minutes on the elliptical; followed by a 30 minute session of weight training; and ending with a nice 20 minute cool down on the stationary bike.  All in all, 70 minutes of movement was not bad at all.

Some other days I would hit the pool, and those sessions would be hit or miss. Each time I felt a weird pool on my belly, I would get scared that I was causing my placenta to bleed and that took all the enjoyment out of  swimming. I was mostly doing pull sets and some easy swimming, managing to get in at least 1500 yds each session. Not going hard (because that is what made my belly “pull”) or varying your paces much makes swimming a little too boring for my taste and 1500 yds was as much as I could muster to swim. Not to mention the weird looks I kept getting at the pool when people realized how tight my suit was getting and the size of my belly.  Yes, I am super self conscious about my body image.

Other days I would just walk around the neighborhood. Put on my music, my ironman visor, grab my water bottle and just go. The neighborhood is a 1.05 mile loop; and by going past my house over and over I guaranteed myself that if I needed to pee, I would just go in and use my own toilet. Luckily, I do not think I was ever to that point where I had to pee every 20 minutes, but definitely once an hour.
Everything was going just fine, and by the time I had the doctor’s appointment where they told me my placenta had moved and there was no more bleeding risk; Megan was going back to school and I had developed a big case of carpal tunnel. At first I thought my hands hurt because I had been holding onto my weights too hard while doing bicep curls at the gym; but when my hands did not stop hurting 5 days post weight lifting session I knew something was wrong.

I had to start sleeping with wrist braces, and even then my hands hurt constantly during the day. To give you an idea; if I did not wear the braces to bed, when the time to wake up came, my hand would not even be able to form the letter C. Talk about limited range of motion. To this day, still sleeping with wrist braces, I am not able to lift a gallon of milk by the handle; or even my full cup of coffe, without pain shooting all the way from my had to my elbow. Talk about a blow to the ego. Here I am, Ironman finisher, strong woman I thought I was, not being able to lift a gallon of milk.

Other aches and pains have started to settle in as well. Both Megan and Brody (little dude to be) took a liking to the right side of my body. What does this mean? Constant pressure on my right ribs. This discomfort builds up during the day and by the time the day is over I am mostly in tears because there is no position that alleviates the pain. And I feel this limits me, both physically and mentally.  Moving hurts, sitting hurs, laying down hurts; it is constant hurt, hurt, hurt and I do not know what to do with myself. I have cried over this numerous times; I can hang tight for a couple of days but eventually it breaks me. It makes me feel frail and slightly useless. Where is all the strength I had? Where has the willpower to endure gone? These are questions I ask myself almost on a daily basis.

And then, I feel him move. And I am reminded of why I am doing this. I am growing a baby. I think back to all the amazing things we have witnessed with Megan growing up and I can’t wait until we get to witness them again with our little guy.

7 more weeks. I can do this.

I'm Back! (sort of)

A lot of water has gone under the bridge around our household; plenty of change has come and stayed. And we could not be happier. First and most important of all is the fact that the family is EXPANDING! Yes, soon we will be parents of not one, but two children. How is that for a change?!

After Ironman last year, I was extatic. The race was everything I had dreamed of. I had never in a million years thought I would be capable of pulling such an amazing feat; heck 6 years ago I was not even a regular exerciser! But after Megan was born something changed in me and the athlete was born (yes, even though I am no elite, I proudly consider myself an athlete). I wanted to be able to show her that no matter the difficulty of the task at hand; if you set your mind to it, you can accomplish anything you want. In the process I discovered myself, my true passion, and that allowed me to fiercely fight for things in other aspects of my life. And things have been changing ever since. I am now as happy as I have ever been. My family is the best, I am still in love with the sport and I am finally in a good place at work; so much so that I am not dreading having to get up and go to work every morning, I found my niche, what I am good at and I am showing people what good things I can bring to the table. Is it all peachy? Not all the time! But whose life is?

After Ironman, Todd and I sat and talked long and hard about our family. Where we were and where we wanted to be. A long time ago, we had tried having a second child, but my body did not want to cooperate, and I dug myself into this big depressing hole. Things were not working the way we wanted them, my body was refusing to do what it was supposed to do. And that is when I found Coach (who is not coaching me at the time, but with whom I can't wait to work with again) and I took my fitness to the next level. It was then we decided one child was enough. And for the longest time we stuck to it. Megan was all we could handle, and we each had some personal goals that needed to be accomplished; it was our "selfish" time. So we settled with being a family of 3. Fast forward to post Ironman. We were in a good place, mentally, physically, emotionally. We had accomplished what we had set out to do. And we were ready. Ready to take on another challenge, to give expanding our family another try. And you know what? This time it worked! The stars aligned, the planets cooperated, and my body did what it needed to do.

We are curerntly in the final stretch, and are patiently (some better than others) waiting for this little dude:

It has been a whirlwind. Lots of ups and downs. Have I enjoyed the ride so far? For the most part. There are a lot of things I thought would be different/easier with this pregnancy and I had a pretty rough wake up call when most of them did not work the way I anticipated them. But I am still here, and I am still moving forward.

Hopefully, I will be able to put the feelings into words and share them with all of you.