Say 'yes' to the ...bump- week 15

 Doglet took a road trip to luray for the weekend to enjoy some stunning views of the Shenandoah mountains and celebrate ma and pa's 2 year wedding anniversary. Ma loves this place. She didn't remember a rain jacket but she did remember to pack her bump outfit. 

The bnb is every bit as nice as it was when we stayed here for our wedding. Once you stay in a gay-operated bnb, you can never go back to anything else. The owners made me some pickles with cucumbers from their garden (I told them I was pregnant before coming to make sure we could do breakfast outside, etc) and it's such a comfortable stay.

So far doglet and I have shared some of the best ribs from the triple crown BBQ, a mint Oreo milkshake, and really good Indian food prepared by a very direct lady at a gas station (you can guess who found that spot).

We also did a hike in Shenandoah with a mix of big stony man, little stony man, and the AT.  Again, because I brought my bump outfit and not my rain jacket, the first hike attempt ended up with us huddled under a pine tree waiting for the mist-turned-rain to let up (I timed it so we got there right at 1 when the rain was supposed to stop, guess I was a little aggressive). We eventually ran back to the car and toweled off. I was half ready to abort the mission, but zach surprised me with his suggestion that we just "huff it out" in the rain.  Either he was feeling adventurous or the current $30 skyline drive entrance fee (wtf) was motivating him. 

Either way, it turned out great because it finally did stop and it was a lot cooler than yesterday which was greatly appreciated. When we got to the top, the fog was moving so fast that at times it was completely obscuring the view below, and then seconds later would open up fleeting glimpses of the valley, which was very cool. Fog is top notch. Later on I realized the hike was a great opportunity for another bump pic:

I don't understand what's happening in my body right now. Mainly just that by the middle of the day my upper abdomen is so bloated, it looks like doglet is sitting above my belly button. My stomach feels like an expanding sausage trying to break free of its casing. 

Regardless, feeling good and doglet is helping us celebrate good memories in style

genetic testing

 There are some things that happen that don't make it to the blog, especially concerning Zach and I's interactions. There are some things the public doesn't need to know. One of these things was the conversations and events surrounding our call with the genetic counselor, which quite frankly was hilarious, but to an unseasoned observer may be confusing, and possibly wrong. 

To cover all of our bases we opted for the expanded carrier package. I got my results back and everything is fine except I am a carrier for Alpha-sarcoglycanopathy, also known as limb-girdle muscular dystrophy. I'm not too worried about it, since the chances of Zach also being a carrier are slim. Zach hasn't gotten his results back but I will be sure to update the blog with his genetic problems when I do. 😄

Probably like how you can find something to identify with in a horoscope and think there's more to it than there is, I was creeped out when I read certain traits associated with this disease because they were vaguely familiar, although I clearly do not have the disease myself. 

The trait that freaked me out the most was protruding, close-together shoulder blades (specifically your scapulae). I have always had pretty prominent scapulae, and they are hypermobile- I've always been able to touch my elbows in the back due to their flexibility. This always seemed beneficial for swimming, but now it makes me go hmmm. 

It also mentions that onset in childhood can produce an unusual walking gait, such as waddling or walking on the balls of your feet. 

1. People used to tell me I walked like a duck :(

2. I did go through a period where I walked on my tippy toes. But I think this is fairly common in children. 

Otherwise, nothing else adds up. I am interested to understand though if carriers can express some traits without clearly expressing a disease. 

Anyhow, Doglet is probably in the clear for any major inherited issues, which I assumed, but is good to confirm. Go Doglet!

wack alligator nightmare

 zach and i have been talking recently about how our house will be small with a doglet. So I had a dream last night that we were house shopping in a neighborhood built on a small lake, where all of the houses were connected by boardwalks instead of sidewalks. We were standing outside on the boardwalk looking up at a wooden house that was small, but had an awesome 2nd floor balcony overlooking the lake. This house was kind of off by itself, and the boardwalk running by it only continued 20 more feet or so and dead ended at the water like the end of a pier. The boardwalk beyond the house was in disrepair and sinking into the water, and I noticed there was an alligator taking advantage of this to get up on the boardwalk to catch fish.

I wasn't too worried about it- the alligator was kind of close to us, but it seemed confined to just jumping up onto the sunken part of the boardwalk and back down like it was on a leash, so I figured that if we didn't walk over there it wouldn't bother us. So I continued to admire the house and its second floor balcony from where I was, but Zach decided that he wanted to get a better look. 

I told him not to go over there because of the alligator, but he didn't listen to me. Right when he got to the sunken part of the boardwalk, the alligator jumped up and started nipping at him, still kind of like it was on a leash. I was frozen with panic. He backed up against a railing, but the alligator kept coming closer and closer, so he started sliding along the railing back the way he came, until suddenly the railing stopped and he fell backwards into the water behind him.

At that point the alligator broke free of its invisible leash and lunged over the boardwalk into the water on the other side, where Zach was. To my dismay, I realized that instead of trying to get out and climb up onto the boardwalk on the other side, Zach was playing dead and floating in the water, and the alligator was approaching him. My reaction to seeing this could be described as SMH, with anger. 

Now I had an agonizing decision. Jump in the water and try to save Zach, risking the life of my unborn child, or do nothing and lose Zach? Ultimately my brain couldn't make that kind of decision, and I promptly woke up. That dream hurt. 

I soon fell back asleep, and dreamed that I was missing an old shoe, and decided to go back to WT Woodson High School to see if it was still in my locker, 15 years later. The school had changed a lot- it had been fully renovated and there were high end luxury shops in the hallways. I finally did manage to find what I thought was my old locker, but realized that I couldn't remember the locker combination. Sooo failed mission, I never got my old shoe back. I guess after that first dream my brain had to bring the intensity down a little bit...

lights, camera, bump- week 14

The bump really started to fill out this week. I was wondering if Doglet was having a big growth spurt and that was why I wasn't feeling too great.

I went on a walk one night just to force myself to move and poked the top of my belly while I was walking. It felt so doughy and weird. It was really a wake up call that things are really going to start changing now that I'm in my second trimester, and to mentally prepare for that. 

From pictures I've seen of other women at this stage just the lower abdomen alone starts to poke out more and more. Right now for me it seems like my whole belly is bloating outwards, which is fine- let's just cut to the chase. This bathing suit top I've been wearing the last few weeks is starting to get tight so I might have to switch it out soon for these pictures. 

Quarantine time moves really fast- it doesn't feel like that long ago I set up shop at home for work but really it was 5 months ago at this point. I feel like pregnancy is going to fly by too, how am I already in my second trimester?!

doglet's room

Nothing too much about baby on the way is worrying me right now except for setting up the nursery, so my main focus last week in baby prep was starting to clear out the second bedroom, ie my messy office, to get that started. The shape of the room is narrow and has tricky bumpouts so once we have a nice space to welcome Doglet I'll feel like it's only smooth sailing from there. My plan is draw the room to scale on some grid paper and use trace paper over it to come up with different room layouts. Four years of architecture school has fully prepared me to put this nursery together.

After actually thinking about the room and having a baby in it for a solid 5 minutes I realized that there was no way we were going to be able to keep the big desk in there with monitors and continue using it as a functional office, I don't know what we were thinking. I mentally downsized the plush glider I was thinking I could nurse on to a rickety, cushionless wooden rocking chair. J/K but we're going to have to find something in between that can fit in the corner. The only other place in the house for the desk is going to be the living room in between the front door and the window, where we currently have an open buffet thing where we store shoes. We got the buffet for free but it fits perfectly in that space and is a pretty nice piece, so I am loathe to get rid of it. There's really no where else to put it though. Woe is having a small house. 

I assume I will be back at work after maternity leave ends but I will still work from home when possible, or may need to work odd hours sometimes from home. Zach uses the desk in the second bedroom a lot too, so he can see Twitter and Signal threads on the big screen. So we gotta do what we gotta do to continue to meet our screen needs. 

So this week I posted a bunch of stuff in the second bedroom on Craigslist, including a white 'shabby chic' dresser I bought off Craigslist when we moved in 7 years ago. I bought it a bit on a whim when my parents were in town with their van and I wanted to get a dresser in there so I went for it. 

It wasn't too hard to get rid of. I put it up for $50, mainly because I wanted to sell it fast and the drawers are kind of loose and hang down when you open them. It's a fun looking little dresser but definitely very rustic. I received probably 20 inquiries for the dresser, including another woman who wanted to put it in her upcoming nursery (she was the 2nd person to respond but I laid the facts down hard for her and told her I didn't recommend it for heavy use and she didn't reply back). I ended up selling it to someone who wanted it so bad that she venmo'ed me the night before she picked it up and told me she wasn't bringing anyone with her to pick it up but that she was "strong enough" to carry it by herself. Damn girl. Why does this dresser have so much allure? Zach and I brought it downstairs but I ultimately helped her bring it to her car. I thought I was losing money between the price I originally paid and the sale price because I remember when we were loading it into the van my dad commented that the dresser wasn't worth the money I paid and that I was going to have to eventually pay someone to take it off my hands (lol). But Zach told me I originally bought this dresser for $40 so I apparently made a $10 profit. I didn't realize this dresser was an appreciating asset, I probably could have sold it for more. As a side note, people will go really far out of their way on Craigslist to pick stuff up. I put up one of those himalayan salt lamps for free because it lighted unevenly (which I noted in the ad) so I figured I couldn't sell it for more than $5, and I received probably 50 inquiries. I ended up doing a contactless porch dropoff with a girl who used a lot of emojis in her emails and had a 35 minute one way trip to pick up, which didn't seem worth it to me at all but whatever, glad she got her lamp. 

After I got rid of the dresser I was happy to have that space finally opened up and open to new possibilities. But to my dismay this is what it looks like now:

This is Zach's computer chair that he has been using since JMU. We even recently replaced the chair at the desk with a newer chair from Harry's parent's office (thank you!) that I find really comfortable for sitting in all day. The old chair has been sitting behind the new chair for weeks, in my way every time I turn around in the chair and try to get up. I put Zach's old chair up on Craigslist for free, never thinking that there would be an issue given we were getting rid of a bunch of things in here to clear out space. I clinched a deal immediately and let Zach know someone would be coming the next day to get it. But then I learned that there would be no one coming the next day, because we would be keeping the chair until it was absolutely necessary to get rid of it. So there it sits in the corner, unwanted (by me) and unused (by both of us). But I didn't fight it because it seemed like Zach had a sentimental tie to his old friend, the nasty chair, so I will save the battle for another day. Or if I am totally forbidden from getting rid of the chair, retrofit it by constructing a box on the seat and turning it into a rolling crib.

the best of labor positions

 Every Saturday morning I wake up to a notification on my phone from the Bump app that I reached a new week. Yay!

I typically peruse the articles they have lined up for that week while I wake up and see if there is anything interesting. This week there was an articled called "13 Best Labor and Birthing Positions for You and Baby" and it did not disappoint because it had illustrations. In all of the positions the women look like they are in the middle of a nice, long yoga shivasana with a little smile on their faces rather than being in the middle of the most painful thing you will probably ever experience. Here are some of my favorites.

This woman looks like she is going on a casual stroll to her kitchen to get a snack:

I hope I can spend my labor just strolling back and forth for hours with my eyes closed. 

This woman looks like she just got back from a jog and is feeling a little tight afterwards:

This woman has an unusual prayer ritual before eating dinner:

I actually very much want to do this position during labor, but I hope they have something more sturdy like a ballet bar so I can hang on it a little bit. The last PT appointment I had was in person (I've been switching between in person and telehealth) and my physical therapist asked me to resist or push when she put pressure on my leg in different directions. She realized that my legs are probably stronger than they look (still have some leftover muscle from the 20 mile/day commute I guess) and had to brace herself to try to move them. She said that my muscle strength going from the side of my bum to my leg (the gluteus medius I think) was going to help a lot during child birth and removed some of the exercises from my PT plan to target this area. So that made me feel more confident about my birth plan. 

Lastly, my favorite, the woman who is inexplicably hauling @$$ moving a pullout sofa:

I am on board with all of these and will start practicing.