February 13th, 2004

I had really planned to do a fragment last night and I had been looking forward to getting a chance at it, but it looks like I’m not going to nail it this week. Pregnancy caught up with me. I had a bad night Wednesday night and Thursday felt really sluggish and in pain at work all day. By the time I got home I was beat. Some days are like that. The groin pains I talked about earlier are apparently round ligament stretching. According to what I’ve read they’re supposed to have stopped by now and be mostly a second trimester thing. Instead of stopping they’ve changed. Rather than coming when I move from one position to another and being sharp pains, like they were, they arrive whenever they want as a dull persistent throbbing. They wake me up out of sleep and start up at random intervals, even if I’m completely still. Not a change I’m pleased about. Last night I took a lukewarm bath and that seems to have helped. Nothing like letting the water carry the weight for a while. I was able to sleep comfortably and well last night, though I’m still waking up several times a night to go to the bathroom, of course. So, while I meant to be writing for fragment I was sipping warm tea and groaning in pain, instead. Alas. Things don’t always turn out the way we want them to.

Also on the pregnancy front, I’m done eating the huge meals now. Heartburn has started kicking in and made a nibbler out of me. Last week both times I ate pizza I regretted it, and I’ve already started in on the TUMS. I don’t know what pregnant women did before TUMS. There are so many things you can’t take while you’re pregnant, and TUMS is totally safe. It’s probably just as well that I can’t carry on gorging myself at every meal, I need to slow it down with the weight gain anyways or I’ll be very uncomfortable. I also have to eat several hours before I lie down or I’ll get reflux. Yech.

I’ve also noticed that I need to be extra mindful about my back. Apparently the stress of the additional weight on my back has made it extra susceptible to being put out. The bad sleep night was a combination of pain from the sides of my abdomen and middle back aches. I found myself at 1 in the morning doing down dog and bridge to try and straighten myself out again. I know I’m not supposed to be doing long down dogs at this late stage as it’s a bit of an inversion, but I kept it short, and really I find nothing unkinks my back better than down dog. I love that pose! I had to miss yoga this week, and I wonder if that has contributed to me having more problems with pain the past few days, but there could be no connection between the two. After all, I’m at the stage where discomforts of this type are just par for the course. Luckily I’ve had no swelling yet. I’m still wearing my wedding ring and my regular shoes. I’m thinking that the cold is helping with that, and I wonder if I’ll start swelling up when it gets warm. I’m craving the warmth anyways…I’m so tired of the cold. Even if it does help, I must admit that going to yoga is increasingly seeming like a futile exercise, since there’s so little I can still do. I told Kurt last week that I feel as though I’m in a different class, because I have to substitute so many poses. Everyone in the room is doing plank and I’m just rolling along with cat and dog stretches. Everyone else does updog and cobra and I do Baddha Konasana. I do squats when they do forward bends. I can’t even get into child pose anymore, which I hadn’t realized would happen. I substitute half dog for the resting pose, which feels great, btw.

Well this post has been pretty heavy on the whine so I’ll close with a pleasant discovery. After I had the first couple of charley horses a few weeks ago and remembered how horrible it was to get them all the time and to wake up in the night with them I decided to read up a little on this very common pregnancy symptom. The recommendation I found was to never point your toes when you stretch (something I always do) and instead stretch with your foot flat and your toes pointed back towards you. Since then, whenever I’ve felt the first tingling of leg cramps, I’ve immediately stretched with my toes pointed back towards me and it has worked! I haven’t had another charley horse since! Who knew the solution was so plainly simple? Hurray!

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