i like big bumps and i can not lie- week 19

 This week around Tuesday/Wednesday I started really feeling like my belly was starting to pop out more (compare with week 18/17). It seemed like overnight Doglet had doubled in size. Think I have maybe felt some flutters but haven't felt any definitive kicks or anything yet. Can't believe I am almost half way there- it both feels like I have been pregnant forever because I think about it so much and that it's going by very quickly and Doglet will be here soon 😮

We will find out the gender on October 9th, and I am highly anticipating it. We were supposed to find out on October 5th but Friday worked better for us so I accepted having a slight delay. Typically I don't think I'm super "girly" but I love the little person baby clothes and while I think most of what we get will be gender neutral'ish, I do want a few ridiculously cute dresses if it's a girl or some kind of boy thing (like a sweater vest?? 😅). Also excited to start coming up with names, although I might keep calling the baby Doglet before he/she is born regardless...

swimming

 Now that I'm solidly in my 2nd trimester I definitely notice a difference in my energy level than my 1st trimester. I'm not falling asleep at like 10:30/11pm anymore and besides my growing belly, generally don't feel pregnant. Definitely had some low level nausea for a while too, which I think kind of ramped up gradually so that I really only notice it now that it's gone. 

Even so, since the pools opened for the summer, Zach and I have swam every weekend except for 1 or 2. Each week, Zach and I transformed into Laura and John Riskind so that we could use a reserved lane at Mantua pool in Fairfax (or each took a lane if they were free, Zach has become a championship swimmer but still struggles with swimming in a straight line and I have to be vigilant so we don't have a head-on collision). Swimming, IMO, is the best all around exercise you can do for your body, so I'm happy to have kept it up all these years, and it's always listed as a go-to pregnancy exercise. It only seems appropriate that my inaugural first trimester pregnancy barf was in the bathroom at Mantua pool.

Now the outdoor pools are closed, but Zach's mom finagled a spot for us at the JCC pool, and we went for the first time on Friday after I got done working. They aren't taking any new memberships right now so I'm not totally sure how she did this but I think she dropped the preggers card hard on them.  We have 3 free guest passes and then will have to pay $20 per visit, which is fine, although I wish they didn't limit the swims to 45 minutes. Mantua pool had that as well but they were pretty loosy goosy about it as long as lanes weren't in demand. JCC is running a tight ship and does 15 minute cleanings every 45 minutes so you have to get out. I don't know quite what they're cleaning that isn't getting killed by the chlorine, maybe the locker rooms. The lifeguard told us that we were the 2nd and 3rd people to use the pool that whole day- we had the entire pool to ourselves. 

I generally feel the same swimming but have been taking it pretty easy, I don't do more than a 200m at a time and typically am just doing 100s and 50s. I've cut my workout in half to about 1000-1200m/per swim, although most of the decrease is due to a nagging shoulder issue that I think came from upping my yardage too quickly for the triathlon training. While I could physically do the required 1500m swim all in one go and it felt great on my lungs, I think it was too much on my shoulder. It's not too bad and I think I already had a bit of an issue there but I'm babying it a little anyways. Flip turns are still no problem, although I will need to listen to my body on that one if they get uncomfortable. I've read that some swimmers have no problem doing them all through pregnancy, and others start to not feel good doing them. 

One thing I have noticed is that my muscles don't feel quite like they have it in them to go as fast as I could pre-pregnancy. I've heard that your 'fast twitch' muscles decrease during pregnancy because your body is releasing a hormone appropriately named 'relaxin', which among other things literally relaxes your ligaments. This is a little weird for me, because I think in general I have pretty solid fast twitch muscles. I have to take a moment to brag- one of my most satisfying swimming moments was in college when we were having a big multi- school club team meet (club swimmers for schools like UVA that have good NCAA teams are no joke) and I took down the 25m free. The 25m free is 1 lap of the pool, and after 8 years old you never will swim it in a meet again because it doesn't exist as an event, so I guess they decided to do it just for fun. A one lap race is like an animal sprint to the other side that obviously none of us had trained for. So feeling a little slow is weird, but kind of helps put me in a mindset of using the swim to stretch out my muscles and get some length in my stroke. 

Besides swimming, I haven't been doing too much else consistently. I use getting free things from the capitol hill mom's group as an excuse to get on my bike, and try to arrange pickups during lunch at work so I can get off my butt for a few miles and enjoy the amazing fall weather. Otherwise I tend to stay inside in my PJs all day, so that's been good. 

The exercise class that really jolted me back to reality was with FIT4MOM DC. They were having an outdoor free class for their 5 year anniversary, and it said on the website that it was appropriate for prenatal, so I decided to join in. I had already tried one of their actual prenatal classes via Zoom earlier in the summer and it was super easy so I was expecting this to be similar. Wrong, this class was more like a normal exercise class with established moms and I was the only pregnant lady there. We had to do introductions in the beginning and the instructor was surprised that I was pregnant, and kept going on about how it was great for a preggers to get involved in this kind of class. There was quite a bit of running, tons of squat type exercises, and resistance band training. This class was hard as f. I went to a free outdoor HIIT class with a non-mom group the following week that was easier than this. But since it was a mom's group and they knew I was pregnant, I felt no pressure to prove anything, and walked during some of the running, etc. I was so sore for several days after this class, but it also felt good and I realized I need to make sure to keep up a little strength training. 

Last weekend was super fun playing doubles tennis, I felt really good running around a bit and didn't really feel too inhibited besides a few times on my backhand, which I think is probably more core involved than a forehand. It definitely surprised me, I was thinking that things were going to feel awkward out there.  The weather was phenomenal and I'm hoping to keep playing a little tennis through the fall, at least while it still feels good. 

I keep having weird dreams including some nightmares, and in one of them the other night I was walking through the door from an alleyway into some kind of indoor corridor, and passed a hunched old man wearing a robe with a hood over his head. He kind of looked in my direction which sketched me out, so I decided to turn around and go back into the alleyway. As I turned around, I realized that he was now following me, wasn't such an old man after all, and then he started chasing me. I tried to hold the door for a while but realized I was going to have to make a run for it. I was heavily pregnant, but broke out as fast as I could. As I moved along I remember thinking that it was a good thing I had kept in shape during the pregnancy so I could out-run him, and that was the end of the dream. I guess the dream was kind like of a parable. I'm definitely moving into a more vulnerable state than I'm used to, which is going to be weird, but I have a little bit it control over it.

In general though, I'm trying not to overdo things and limit myself to one kind of exercise per day, because the day I did the FIT4MOM class I also went on a planned walk and I was totally spent afterwards. With the pandemic, being outside is about the only thing to do right now so that can be hard, plus I always want/feel like I need to do everything, so I'm just having to be more deliberate right now and say no sometimes. Gotta get some rest too for the growing pup.

neighbors

We've been in our house for 7 years, and at this point there's been so much turnover on the block we basically only know the people in the immediate houses surrounding us. It's kind of sad, all of the younger couples who we met when we moved in, and liked, all left within a few years. In two of the houses across and diagonal from us, the couples who replaced them were far inferior. They're both kind of middle aged, seem to have no personality, and I can't remember any of their names ever. All I know is that during the pandemic one of them had an entire box of Dunkin Donuts delivered to their house and Zach and I both noticed it sitting on their doorstep and thought it was hilarious. 

All of the other neighbors in our immediate vicinity have been in the area for a long time. In between the two boring couples is one neighbor who I know is old as hell and have maybe seen twice in the entire time that we've been here. I'm not even sure if there are 1 or 2 people there, all I know is old. Beside them is an older guy named David Brewster, who we don't see very often but are friendly with. We've had a lot of package thefts in the neighborhood recently and he recently texted our next door neighbor Teresa to let her know we had a package outside so she could tell us (I think David and Teresa watch out for each other's houses so we're reaping the benefit but it was nice of him). For the longest time, we thought this guy in the neighborhood was his son and (privately) always called him Brewster's son. This guy, who we now know is not his son, is probably in his 20s or 30s and is pretty high functioning but has some kind of disability. The first time we met him we were a little sketched out, because it was Halloween and he's a big guy that was hanging around our fence with a mask on and we thought he was drunk or something. He was kind of being a hype man for our candy and getting the kids to come to our house, but Teresa was outside too and we got the idea that he was okay from her. Shortly after that, we must have seen him at David Brewster's house and then he became his son. He is a little hard to understand sometimes but is pretty amusing to talk to. He often does basic yard and handyman work for our neighbor, Webster (ie Mrs. Doretha Webster) but seems to have very poor tools and spends a lot of time talking about what should be done instead of actually doing anything, which includes recommendations for our house as well. The work he does for her might be more charity than anything else. 

Webster aka Webby is an older woman on our right who has lived in her house since she was a girl and I unfortunately don't get along with that well. At first we had a great relationship with her, she even invited us inside her house one time to have a look or something. If it snowed, Zach would always shovel for her. But things soured after the sidewalk incident, where I thought I made a pretty reasonable request that in the future if she did any work that impacted our house, that she let us know beforehand (not mentioned, things falling off our wall due to the jackhammering onto a newly purchased vintage wood sideboard that was in mint condition, and having to pay to fix our siding where the sidewalk had been pulled up). I was pretty direct with her contractor, who I'll admit I treated with very little respect because he wasn't planning on putting a vapor barrier between our then exposed wood siding and the soon to be poured concrete and I had to do it myself with some of my own plastic sheeting as they were pouring. I thought he was a fool. But I don't think she was mad because of that- she was mad because I made that request of her, and things were never the same after that. Webby knows how to hold a grudge. Of course Zach never had to deal with this so he's all laughs and jokes with her still and I'm bad cop. But she's kind of amusing- she used to have an outdoor cat named Pete who she would call every night at like 12am for food. So every night we would hear "Pete! Pete!" until the cat came. We would often find Pete hanging out in our yard when we got home and he would always scurry away when he saw us. I think Pete basically lived in our backyard and dined at Webby's house. But now Pete is gone and we have that rat and I really miss Pete. Also now that I'm at home during the day, I've noticed that she is very particular with her trash cans. She brings them back to her yard in like 3 stages and once she gets the back there she spends like 10 minutes arranging them. One time during the pandemic she knocked on our door at like 10pm and I opened it hoping for a good interaction with her but she just wanted to complain to me about something to do with our trash can. I think I ignored whatever her request was and basically told her I was going to do so until the next day but whatever she is old and I guess I respect her right to be a biatch. Her adult daughter moved into the house a while back and she seems chill so I communicate any necessary neighbor information to her now instead. She even warned me one time, when I was out maintaining the overgrown city tree box that sits on the sidewalk between our houses, that her mom wasn't going to be happy about that. She was right. The next time I saw webby, I had just gotten finished with hand scrubbing our entire siding (exhausted), and she started going on about the tree box and how I wasn't allowed to touch it blah blah blah (which isn't true). There were vines growing up the big gingko tree trying to overtake it, vines growing out into the sidewalk impeding walkers, etc, and I thought I was just helping out. I especially don't like the vines suffocating the gingko tree and said something to that effect but she wasn't hearing it so I gave it up and haven't touched it since. Occasionally the city comes around and does that work for me, which I'm sure she hates. She's also growing a pine tree in the tree box off of the gingko (???) that she said her grandson gave to her in a cup and in that same convo she told me the city lopped off the top of it one time when they were doing tree box maintenance and it made her so mad. I could have died laughing. What an old bat. 

Finally our 3 neighbors on our left, the 3rd down is another old person house with at least one very old man that I've seen maybe twice, who did a very extensive exterior renovation on his house, including a nice looking second floor balcony in the back that I have never seen him use once. 

Two doors down is an Eritrean family that we love. They have one daughter at UVA and two little girls who play in the backyard all the time and are super cute. They all came to my UDC graduation party and the little girls were dancing up a storm. We've seen them a lot during the pandemic since we all have been spending a lot of time in our backyards. Ourselves, Webby, Teresa, the Eritrean family, and the old man all have low/open fences (ie none of us have improved our fences) so our backyards feel pretty open and we can see each other, which is kind of nice. The dad always has a project going on in the backyard that he's doing while the girls are running around/"helping" out. I like how they get the kids outside to play every day- definitely want to make sure we do that. The dad likes to run and I've seen the girls trailing behind on their bikes while he runs ahead 👍

Lastly is our neighbor on the left, Teresa, who is the reason I thought about writing this post this week. Teresa is the bomb- she lives in her house with her two young adult daughters, and claims that she is at senior citizen status but seems/looks a lot younger. Last week she gave me a book on child rearing and just has generally been a solid neighbor that looks out. I think she prevented me from assaulting someone last week. I was upstairs working, when all of a sudden I started hearing noises downstairs. It sounded like someone was trying to break in, and then I think because I was freaking out it sounded like someone was in the house. I thought maybe I had left the door unlocked or something. I shouted 'hello?' and for the first time since being in the house I grabbed the baseball bat we keep in the corner of our room. I was fully prepared to crack a skull if I needed to. We watched this show a few months ago on Netflix called Last Kingdom set in 11th century England and Brita, the Dane, continues to be a great warrior while like 8 months pregnant, so I figured I could go into battle too if necessary. But I wasn't opposed to some help, so I picked up the phone as well in case I needed to call the police. I immediately noticed that I had a call from Teresa, and also a text from her, saying that the window guy was here and he had tried to contact us. I had nothing from him. I looked out and he was measuring our windows from the outside of the house and all the noise was the measuring tape against the side of our house. I was so mad at window guy, but also so happy I got that text. So it got me kind of thinking about our neighbors, who are definitely a mixed bag but I think we at least feel pretty safe here with them.

pumpkin spice bump- week 18

Hello Fall and Week 18!

New location due to the colder weather, with bike cameo. This week the baby's bones begin to harden,  including the inner ear bones, so doglet can hear sounds now. Doglet can also swallow now, including drinking amniotic fluid. Ewww. They think it might be good for their gut and lung development.

The seasons definitely changed this week- threw on some jeans for the first time for a backyard hangout this week (which the rat did make an appearance from our neighbor's yard, I thought we were rid of him after no appearances for a while 😒). Can currently still fit in my jeans and am going to get some waist expanders to get me through the coming weeks so I only need to make one (hopefully) transition to uber pregnant jeans. At this point though, I'm still in the dark on pregnancy clothes and sizing, I've been focusing on other things, except I did score a maternity pea coat this week which I think will be perfect at least for those mild winter days and a big puffy Old Navy maternity coat for the cold days for a total of $15 so done and done. I'm not really going to be going anywhere where I'd be taking the coat off so I don't think I even need much besides a coat to conceal an obscenely small non-pregnancy shirt underneath.

Maybe it was because it started getting colder, but I started thinking a lot about what Doglet is going to wear for those first few weeks moving into spring. I don't want to go overboard, since it will likely just be a few weeks, but I also want to keep Doglet nice and toasty. I can predict with absolute certainty that there will be a winter hat with bear ears on it and over the top booties. 

I figured I would ask my parents since I was a February baby as well. I will not mention some of my dad's suggestions, but my mom said just get some long sleeve things with footies. Easy enough. Everything I found online was like these big sacks, some of which looked like big wearable sleeping bags:

It seemed kind of like overkill, but maybe I will find one just in case, plus they're kind of funny. My mom said she couldn't get me in anything that restricted my legs, so I guess things haven't changed much, because I still thrash around in sleeping bags trying to get my legs free and hate having sheets tucked in. I think one hard thing right now is that there are so many choices for so many different things, and it's impossible to know what is going to work for doglet until the time comes. I'm thinking maybe have a few things on hand, and get more when something sticks. Definitely do not need a drawer full of these insulated potato sacks.

Zach and I both tend to sleep hot so we keep our heat pretty low in the winter and keep an extra layer on if it's a little cold hanging out. Since doglet can't have blankets, we're probably going to have to turn the heat up higher than we'd like. Or get doglet one of those chick incubators that keep warm? 😁 That was the coolest thing in Kindergarten. 

there's no bump like this bump - week 17

 doglet the bump is now the size of a pomegranate:

we had our 16 week appointment last week and everything looked good, although they didn't do much. we talked about my puff face for a while, but all tests were negative for covid, strep, and other pathogens, so it will forever be a mystery what was wrong with me. the puff is gone now. they also used a doppler heart monitor to hear the heartbeat which is what I mainly wanted to do during this appointment. There was a med student in the room shadowing the OBGYN and she applied the doppler, so I knew I would need to wait for a bit while she found the right spot to hear the heart beat, but it was still unpleasant waiting so long to hear that thump. I also did my second trimester bloodwork, which all came back normal. I clocked in at 125 lbs. 

We saw an OB this week instead of the midwife so we could compare and contrast. You can do a natural birth with an OB, so we figured we would talk to them and see if anything came up that would sway us one way or the other. 

 The OB and midwives are interchangeable to a certain extent. If there are a lot of midwife deliveries one day and not many OB deliveries, the OB may be the one to do the delivery for a midwife patient, and vice versa. The birth rooms are exactly the same (this is not what I imagined, I imagined that the midwife patients would all be out in a big open space in something that resembled the large floor of an open physical therapy practice with exercise balls, ballet bars, and other apparati strewn everywhere. Then at least you could be kind of entertained during labor). All rooms have tubs but the midwives have more training on using them during birth, and the OBs don't use them as much. Because everyone is in the same space, if I were to end up needed a C section, or changed my mind and wanted to do an epidural, I wouldn't have to move at all, the OB would be right there to step in (in my worst case scenario I imagined that you might have to walk down the hall or something 😂).

One difference is that during pregnancy, you will be assigned to one OB and with the midwife track you will see all 9 of the midwives. I'm not sure which is better. The reason you don't get assigned to one midwife is because it could be any of them assigned to you on your actual delivery day. The OB stated that even though we would be seeing her throughout the entire pregnancy, it would be unlikely that she would be the one doing the actual delivery. So continuity of care with one person seems nice, but then you might get so used to that one person, having someone else actually do the delivery might be weird. Scales are even there.  

Another difference that the OB stated is that they tend to spend less time with patients during the delivery. This makes sense, since a midwife patient is typically going to need more hands on assistance getting into different positions, and there are less midwife patients. I also felt like the OB was more rushed than the midwife in the actual appointment, which I don't know if it was just that particular person on that particular day, but I think part of it may be that the midwife is supposed to provide more 'holistic care', while the OB said they are more focused strictly on the medical side of birth and don't get into nutrition and things like that as much. Regardless, I didn't really like that.

So I think for the kind of birth and pregnancy I'm striving for it makes more sense to go with the midwife, and is great to have the best of both worlds with the OBs close at hand. I really liked the first midwife we saw, I felt like she gave us a lot of space and time to talk, ask questions, and she talked a lot too without our prompting. She also was the one who helped talk me through what I needed to do about puff face over the weekend. Next appointment is at 20 weeks and will be with a different midwife- hoping for a similar experience so I can continue to feel confident. 

Best things about being pregnant so far

 There are certainly many strange things that happen during pregnancy that make you frown like puff face. But there are also fun things to discover. Here is what I have found thus far:

1. The baby mama dance compilations, number one. Great song, great dances celebrating the bump. Found on YouTube and snapchat.

2. Even though I am entirely capable, Zach is doing all the driving. Not going to argue.

3. Smoothie king has a smoothie called "Premama" that has prenatal vitamins and super foods in it, and the teenager working at the counter will awkwardly ask you if you are pregnant. 

4. Sleep has come easy and deep, at least for now.

5. There is a doglet in my belly! And I like this concept I hear about called "tummy time" which sounds fun, doglet will be doing a lot of that.

6. I'm eligible to go shop at Safeway during the morning senior hour during these covid times.

Mouse in the house

 Over the years, we occasionally get mice in the house in the winter, maybe a grand total of 3 or 4. The last mouse we had was a disaster, and I am traumatized from it, so last week after finally clearing out all the donation, for sale, and dump items piling up in our living room for weeks, I was depressed when I was enjoying being back in the living room watching Indian Matchmaking (lol) and Zach reported that he saw a mouse come out of our water main "closet", right in the room we were sitting in and go under our shoe rack.

I obviously lost my wits, and we got lucky that after probably hearing me scream and shout, the mouse pretty quickly ran back in there. So now it was time to hermetically seal the area off. I have been meaning to change the panel to a more easy to open door for a while, because if we actually had a water emergency we'd have to get out the toolbox to take the panel off which is stupid. So it's been sitting kind of ajar for a while which is my fault. Regardless, I wouldn't go near it, and Zach is brave with the mouse but not with the toolbox, so I directed him what to do and where to find things in between singing on the couch for the mouse to go away. I mean he was at ground zero, I didn't want the mouse to try to pop out at him while he was at work. 

Then Zach had the A+ idea to seal off the panel with tape to really make sure the mouse couldn't come back out of there (because the construction of this panel is really a joke and barely attached to anything in the first place), so we may incur thousands of extra dollars in water damage getting that thing off if anything were to happen, but it's worth it for a 0-mouse living room. 

I was very aware that this probably wasn't the last we had seen of the mouse, and the next day I checked our poison bait station we leave out under the kitchen cart as a mouse indicator, and noticed that it was half eaten. Nooooo

So now I am on high alert and won't go into the kitchen after 8pm when it gets dark, because the next night I was about to grab an apple and saw it run under the oven. I don't even want to look up the diseases that mice could carry that you don't want to see during pregnancy. For dinner I'm sous chefing in the dining room and standing sentry at the entrance of the kitchen for Zach while he makes gourmet meals at the stove. One night I did observe with my keen eye the mouse come out from under the fridge and I alerted him immediately. I don't understand how he can keep his blood pressure under control with his back turned to something that might touch his foot or something. Although I'm sorry to report for the PETA people out there that he does keep his shoes on sometimes in case he has the chance to stomp it 😯 he's like a primitive hunter with these things, one time in high school a friend had a mouse at their house and he apparently tried to hunt it down with a hatchet. Normally I want to be at peace with the animals but for this, I'm kind of proud? Rodent hunter is unfortunately not a contribution I can make to our household.

I didn't see the mouse at all last night (I do peer my head around the corner often trying to catch it) so maybe it's gone. Regardless I'm worried that this summer mouse portends a rough winter. If the mouse comes out after doglet arrives I actually might have to take up the hatchet too. Luckily Bob got us one for our wedding (not on our registry but so on theme with all the other REI stuff) so more than ready 😤

ready for my accomodations

Now that I've hit the 4 month mark I decided to start telling my work this week that I'm pregnant. I figured that if I was in the office, this is about the time that hiding my belly would start becoming a challenge and would force my hand anyways. Although I really wanted to not tell anyone and show up early next year in the office (assuming we were going back in) with a huge belly to see people's reactions. It would have been an amazing transformation.

I started off with telling our structural team boss, who is very young (probably around 35), new in the role, and managing a huge team (there are 18 of us now!). Right before the pandemic started, our old boss announced that in the twilight years of his career he was moving into an organizational project management role. He was kind of like team dad with an easy way about him and it was unclear who would be filling his shoes. The three other older engineers on the team had no interest in the role- they just want to be engineers, which I get. Below them there is a large age gap with the rest of the team, so that is how it fell on our current boss. All things considered he is actually well-suited for the job and has made the team feel cohesive even in pandemic-times. I think I got really lucky landing a job here, just wish the office was in DC...

So I started by telling the current boss and got very positive vibes from him so that was great. He said that I always made him chuckle because out of the entire team, I am apparently the most aggressive at connecting with other co-workers and finding work when I think my billable hours are going to be low for the week, while other people just take a vacation day if they're low on hours at his suggestion. A few times when he suggested taking a vacation day I wouldn't say a word :) I finally was able to explain to him that the reason was because I'm trying to bank all the PTO I can in preparation for the baby, both because I know that I will need some of it, and as kind of an insurance policy for the unknown. To be honest though, even if I wasn't pregnant I might behave in a similar way because I don't like the idea of forced vacation when I don't need it. So that all went well and he knew the right questions to ask, etc. I told him that I threw up in the middle of one of his meetings one time and he seemed to get a kick out of that.

Later that day I happened to talk to another co-worker that I often work with, so I figured I would tell him as well. He is great to work with and a self-described 'awkward engineer', which I guess I forgot in my excitement to tell him. He's fairly young, maybe late 20s, but a very good engineer and very confident in that arena which is what I'm typically used to. I realized immediately when I told him that he literally had no idea what to say, and that I was going to have to lead any conservation on this subject matter. I gave him a few tidbits and made a few jokes that he could join in on and that was fine, and then pivoted back to the project we were working on. I do all my calls through my computer so Zach could hear the conversation in the background and he said it sounded like I was the first person to ever tell him that I was pregnant, which is quite possible. Overall, 10/10 amusing. 

The next co-worker I ended up talking to I figured would be an entirely different conversation, so I wasn't too worried about it. Also important to note that this co-worker reported to me that he saw the Dune trailer this week that just came out so bonus points. He is also late 20s but kind of like an old man in a young man's body. We had a Hawaiian shirt day this year for some social gathering and he was able to outfit everyone on the team who wanted one in a Hawaiian shirt from his closet, which I thought was great.  He works hard and gets it done but at the end of the day I imagine he's just thinking about that retired life on the beach. He was very congratulatory, and I learned was also born in February which we discussed the pros and cons of, but what really amused me was that he kept referring to how our company would treat me right and that accommodations could be provided to me. I tried to tell him that I was planning to work up until the birth, and besides a few additional doctors appointments, nothing would change about working with me. However, shortly after that he started talking about my accommodations again so I just let it slide. I have finally accepted that I require accommodations now and expect that they will be provided to me as soon as possible. 

Finally, I told a female co-worker who was the first woman to join the team after me (now there are 4 of us with the growing team, not bad). We are similar age, she is really good at what she does, and very funny, so we became fast friends. There was one time that another co-worker got a rabbit, and our boss put it on the team meeting agenda as a bullet point, so she said that maybe my baby announcement will get as good of treatment as the rabbit. Obviously as a woman, she knew more of the 'right' questions to ask so it was fun to tell her everything that's been going on and laugh about it. Also important to note that she also separately reported seeing the Dune trailer this week so she rocks. Now I wonder how many people I told at work that I like Dune.

The team is very strange right now in that out of 18 people there is only 1 person who has children. Part of it is just that it's a young team for sure, but still kind of strange. So there's not really anyone to talk to on the team about working and raising kids. I will talk to the guy for sure, he's got three kids, although his wife has done the majority of the childcare and hasn't reentered the workforce yet. The reason he came to our company is that his old job often required working in the office on the weekends (we have to do that sometimes too but we can at least do it from home if we want) and he felt like he was missing out on his kids. He said an older guy literally died at his desk, and when they went to the funeral one of his kids asked him what his dad was like, because he never saw him since he was working so much. It sounds like something out of a movie. So that triggered him to come to our company, which I get the sense is generally family friendly, at least for an engineering firm. 

Anyways, I guess I was mainly telling people both as a courtesy and probably for my own amusement as well. I have a few other people I need to tell on Monday, otherwise I'll let Doglet take the place of the rabbit for good news on the team meeting agenda. Hopefully my boss mainly handles it, that is kind of an overwhelming number of people to tell at once...

Also because my mom or someone will probably be worried, I didn't use any names for co-workers and this blog is set to unsearchable on the internet, so it's fine. 

You don't mess with the bump- week 16

I was super excited to hit this week because I am now officially 4 months preggers. Also doglet has developed enough to start being able to coordinate the movement of body and limbs, but I likely won't feel any of it just yet. I haven't provided the corresponding fruit size in a while, which my app lists as both an avocado and a chipmunk for this week. 

Unfortunately you can see in the pic I am struggling to smile through a puff face. I woke up this morning looking even a little worse off than yesterday:

After heading to the fort totten waste station to properly dispose of old paint, old ceiling fan, etc, and getting a delicious Italian sandwich at menomale (I've had to cancel all other plans this weekend, can't a girl keep her dump appointment), Zach took me to one of the GW urgent care clinics which was conveniently located nearby. 

The good news is that the doctor wasn't concerned and also thinks it's a pregnancy immune system thing. Did a second strep test and threw a covid test in as well just to be on the safe side. I think my body is giving me a sneak preview for the protective mama bear that I'm going to be. The doctor was very amused that Zach was in the room with me and guessed that this must be our first child, and that I shouldn't get used to that 😔. 

Today is the first time I can say I felt a little hormonal. I went from being slightly amused at how fat my face was (Zach kept calling me Puff Mama) to almost crying on the phone when talking to the GW midwife because she said my symptoms were "abnormal" for pregnancy which is not what you want to hear. I want to be a normal preggers. 

For now I just have to make peace with the puff. If the inflammation time span from the mosquito bite is any indicator I might look like this for at least a week. I will have to keep my video off for work..

Zach gave me a kiss earlier on the cheek and then gave me a little bite, I think subconsciously. I was mad at first but then I forgave him because I think he got my face mixed up with a pork jowl

throat infection?

 So as I mentioned, having an in-person PT appointment was great but I think I may have picked up something from the office. I didn't really notice anything when I woke up, and dragged my butt out of bed to get some cheerios and pull up a bunch of drawings to talk to a co-worker this morning. 

Because I have to pee so much, I went to the bathroom shortly before talking to him. I looked in the mirror and what I saw was alarming- judging from my face I looked like I had gained 30 pounds over night. My upper neck and cheeks were completely swollen. 

I hadn't slept very well the night before and remembered at one point my throat felt a little sore when I swallowed, but I didn't think much of it at the time because sometimes when you're sleeping like a brute with your mouth hanging open it makes your throat feel a little sore. But I didn't really notice anything amiss with it in the morning and had no problem eating my cheerios.

Regardless, I was very alarmed. I told my co-worker I was having some kind of allergic reaction (it will be nice to tell everyone I'm pregnant so I don't have to beat around the bush), ditched work, and called into the telehealth line. From what I described, the doctor on the line thought it might be a throat infection, which I used to be prone to growing up but haven't had for years. In addition to having lymph nodes in your neck, you apparently also have them on the sides of your cheeks by your ears, and he thought they were all inflamed because of fighting off the infection. He said if I wasn't pregnant he wouldn't even bother with it besides rest. 

Zach was out with the car so I rode my bike over to Union Station rather than risk more exposure on public transportation and got a strep test done, which came back negative. They took another culture to send to a lab for additional testing. Obviously covid is always at the back of your mind but the symptoms don't seem quite right- no fever, cough, I generally feel fine, and the lymph node thing isn't a symptom. Coincidentally, Zach had to get a covid test today for an upcoming doctor's visit and the results should be back within 24 hours or so, so I think that should be a good enough indicator, but I will get one done tomorrow if any symptoms get worse. 

Judging from the massive reaction I had to a big bite earlier in the summer (which I can still faintly see on my leg), and now this, I am coming to the conclusion that my immune system may be in overdrive, producing massive reactions to things that I normally have maybe even abnormally mild reactions to, because of the pregnancy. My body is going to protect Doglet at all costs.

At first I thought this was a good thing, because that probably means if I did get covid I likely wouldn't be an asymptomatic carrier and I would know that I had it. But then I started thinking if that would mean my symptoms would also be abnormally bad and I would end up very sick. Zach said if my immune system is in hyperdrive it would probably just mean that it would fight it very hard. So I don't really know what that would look like. Today was not so fun.

I was looking forward to the long holiday weekend and now I am not sure what I am going to be doing. Also now I'm hesitant to go back to the PT office, even though i think it's beneficial for me. Really cramping my style here..

bloated belly mystery solved?

 I've been seeing a physical therapist for my back issue, mainly doing telehealth. But on Thursday I had an in-person visit booked and it's making me realize that even though my PT doesn't have to do a lot of hands-on work, telehealth ≠ in person visit. 

She was able to get a better sense of how my body is moving and make some adjustments to how I'm doing my exercises based on that, so I feel like my toolbox is more robust now.

As for the bloating in my upper belly, she thinks that may be happening because my lower abdomen is a little tight due to the back injury and so my belly doesn't have anywhere else to expand, which it needs to do. This is not good because it means my diastasis (the parting of your ab muscles to allow your belly to expand, which everyone gets to some extent) could happen unevenly. So we worked on buttoning up my upper abdomen which basically just involves a flat back on the floor with massive core engagement and controlled breathing. I noticed that I had a lot less control of getting my left rib to flatten out over my core (back issue is on the left side) and had to poke it every exercise to make sure it was in the right place and adjust if not. Overall this exercise is deceivingly simple because it really works your core and takes a lot of mental concentration to do it correctly. 

At some point I'm told lying on my back is not going to be comfortable so I am going to start going ham on this exercise until then. The pelvic floor exercises I'm doing are also supposed to relax my lower abdominal area. Don't worry Doglet, I'll give you some space to grow. 

Moms (and dads) Of The Hill (MOTH) group- where it's at for the baby things

 Since we're in the process of clearing out some stuff from our house, I started checking the Moms (and dads) Of The Hill (MOTH) group this week to get an idea of what kinds of baby items I could get used from there. It's hosted on this weird groups.io website and has kind of a strange interface so I had been signed up for a while but wasn't looking at it. I guess I finally got the inspiration this week because I was able to pick up probably close to $1000 worth of items for a whopping $0. I've given a bunch of stuff away on Craigslist for free recently but no where close to what parents are giving away on here...

The group is based on location and our address barely makes the cut- if we were 200 feet north, technically we wouldn't be allowed in the group. I think the aim of that is to make the group more of a neighborly kind of thing. The site is also used for getting advice from other parents, and in non-covid times, also a social planning tool. But right now it seems like it's mainly just things for free/sale and it's a superior alternative to Craigslist for these niche items. 

The nice thing about getting stuff from this group vs Craigslist is that most stuff is either a walk or a bike ride away, so I picked up a lot of things during lunch this week. This was good because it got me outside and off my butt. Also since you're dealing with neighbors who are all in this parenting business together, the email/text coordination is very friendly. Everything I picked up was with 'contactless pickup' where I would coordinate with the person when I was coming and they would put it outside for me on their porch shortly beforehand. This is probably mainly a covid measure but it actually kind of makes things easier for both parties. 

I only ran into one issue at a condo-like complex where the directions to their patio area were a little vague, and I realized I entered the wrong gate and was wandering around other people's connected patios/yards trying to find the hidden package. You better believe I was happy to be a white girl doing that. I got out of there stat and found the right place.  

The biggest score for this week was the Babyletto Hudson crib and Pottery Barn mattress, which I've seen on all the crib 'best ofs'. We weren't initially planning on buying a used crib because there are some warnings against that, but we felt okay about this for a few reasons- we were probably going to get this same crib, it's a highly recommended and known crib, it's not an older model crib, and we didn't get it at like a yard sale kind of thing. I learned that the mom is a lawyer and her husband works for the state department, and his job is bringing them to Paris (!). Because of covid this plan was on hold for a while, but once it got green lighted they had to get out fast, so I think they just needed to get rid of everything. The rest of the family is already in Paris and she is just closing up shop. Obviously once we put it together we'll make sure nothing seems amiss, but if all works out that was probably at least $600 worth of stuff with the mattress. 

The hardest thing to carry home this week was a metal gate,which was also on all the gate 'best of' lists (I think everyone is just looking at these same lists). We aren't going to need a gate right away so I hesitated at first, but figured it would be good to get it and try it out while we have the time to make sure it's what we want for our narrow stairs, etc. If not, I'll pass it on to another MOTH. But I walked home with this gate for over a mile and it was heavier than anticipated (I thought most of these gates were lightweight plastic). I was swinging it around from arm to arm and definitely sweat through my shirt because it was sizzlin that day. I also carried a Boppy home on my bike one day with an unopened box of breast milk storage bags and some nice muslin swaddles, which was pretty awkward (mainly because of the giant Boppy). But it's all for Doglet so it's okay.

Anyhow, I'm sure we won't get everything for free but it's good to start getting this stuff so we can get a better idea of what we're going to need to purchase and get everything set up. After that I can stare at it for several months in anticipation of Doglet coming :)