The swollen ankles! I have had a very easy pregnancy but the swelling in my feet and ankles is insane. Youch. I don’t really have anything to report this week. I went to an all-day biz meeting I had to train to and back which left me totally exhausted. I have two trips left, and then done with traveling which I’m so excited for.

I belong to an online community of people with similar due dates and three people in the group have gone into early labor which had made me very anxious. I have no reason to think that will happen to me, but neither did they…I can feel the baby move more often which is soothing for my anxiety. Still waiting for R to feel a kick though (or more like a full belly flop which is what it feels like more than a kick).

Workouts have been fine though I’m a little concerned about my weight gain. Almost more concerned just because it’s sort of traumatic to see my weight go up though rationally I understand that it needs to.

Goals for the weekend include:

• Getting in baby practice with a friend’s newborn!
• Making soup (butternut squash, red lentil, coconut milk)
• Watching hocus pocus
• Going on a half-day meditation retreat.
• Keeping tech sabbath for one of the days.

Ahhh, Friday. There is something psychologically nice about having my pregnancy weeks line up with Fridays. I think I’m experiencing what people reference as the second trimester honeymoon. My body feels good, my emotions feel good, the baby doesn’t feel so close that I’m freaking out, but close enough that I’m kind of excited, etc.

I can feel the baby kick a lot now and pretty consistently. It goes gaga for orange juice, and kicks up a storm once I lay in bed for the night. I tried to get R to feel it yesterday but I guess it’s too early to feel it from the outside. Whenever I’ve been telling people that pregnancy has been pretty easy so far, they always follow-up with something like “wait and see”, often followed by an evil cackle. I find that so strange — why not allow people to enjoy pregnancy if and when it’s easy for them, and then support them when it’s more difficult?

I’ve been reading a ton about postpartum and specifically the idea of the fourth trimester and lying in. Basically, I’ve been trying to figure out what support I want to proactively plan for in the weeks immediately post-labor. Pregnancy and labor I don’t feel too concerned about, but the period after and transitioning to a completely new life stage does feel emotionally overwhelming.

My mom, who used to practice as a Certified Nurse Midwife, suggested R and I move into their house for the first 2-4 weeks post-baby, so we could learn baby skills but also have support of family to cook and clean and generally do everything non-baby related while we figure out baby. I was resistant to this idea at first but literally every book I read about the topic says this is what we are missing in modern society, and that it’s a very helpful and traditional thing to assist new mothers in transitioning to their new life. So definitely something we are thinking about.

Otherwise, life has felt good. I’m like obsessively into R right now which I find kind of funny, but also looking forward to spending this weekend home alone and doing whatever I want. And one of my oldest and dearest friends who recently moved away is visiting and I can’t wait to see her 🙂

Technically a week early. Pregnancy felt like it dominated my life this week, mostly because I had to leave work early three out of four days for a doctor’s appointment. Once with the midwives, once for a follow-up ultrasound, once for my OB. We decided to go with the midwives. They generally seemed much more hands-on and supportive of the parents’ preferences, and had a much lower c-section rate (like almost 20% lower). So that feels good!

Otherwise, physically I have felt pretty good. I am on track with the one pound a week estimate of weight gain and realized today that I have had basically no back or knee pain, despite being a lot heavier than my usual weight. I attributed that 100% to lifting weights because my body has the strength to carry the extra poundage.

And I bought a bucket to soak my swollen feet in. Ahhhhh. It’s so nice. Last night, I soaked my feet in Epsom salt while reading a book. It was the bomb dot com.

We also had our last ultrasound this week so it’s sort of insane to think the next visual we’ll get of the baby will be the real baby that exists as its own entity in the world. But not for at least 16 more weeks! Four months of wait.

Otherwise in life, things are good. I have a long weekend this week so am looking forward to getting out of town a bit and re-charging and maybe checking out a Korean spa or something.

So…on almost a whim, I just called a Nurse-Midwife group to schedule a meet-and-greet because I’m thinking about switching practices. My current doctor, an OB at a group practice, is great. Very laid-back, very much not seeing pregnancy as an illness but as a normal life condition, which I like. But I feel like she’s almost too hands-off. Like, in my week 12 visit, I told her I felt like I had a groin pull. I thought that because 1) my groin hurt and 2) it literally started hurting in the squat rack, after I lost my balance while warming up with the barbell, and 3) the symptoms were the exact same symptoms that R had when he pulled his groin squatting. She saw it as just a pregnancy symptom of some common pelvic shifts and pains. At week 16, the pain was still there, and worse, and she was still unconcerned. I made an appointment with a physical therapist who confirmed that I did, in fact, have a groin pull. The stretches he gave me to address the issue almost immediately cleared it up.

My ultimate fear is that because she is so nonchalant and maybe also not the most in-tune with what I am thinking or feeling, she’ll push me into having a c-section. Or, honestly that communication will break down when I’m exhausted and overwhelmed from laboring and I won’t be able to trust her to have my back. I also have some anxiety about the hospital having limited private rooms for partners to stay the night and being fairly intervention-focused on the whole (e.g. more into constant monitoring of the baby which prevents the mom in labor from moving around at all).

At the same time, I’m very pro-epidural and sort of anti-birth plan, because I think you just have to do your best with the circumstances you have.

All of this just to say, that I’ll meet with the CNMs on Monday, have a follow-up ultrasound to our anatomy ultrasound Tuesday, and then have a meeting with my OB on Thursday that I’ll decide what to do with.

We did also have the anatomy ultrasound this week which was great. Our baby has such insanely cute little feet! The feet! And ze was very active, kicking its legs and moving it’s tiny arms all around. And yesterday, I think I felt my first baby movement which felt much more like Delhi belly than I would have thought, haha. I was expecting a gentle poke, but it’s more like a full belly rolling.