10 more weeks to go!

Today I am exactly 30 weeks. I have 10 weeks left to go. I seriously can't wait for this bebe to come out. I never enjoyed being pregnant, and now that I'm getting to the point where I'm supposed to be gaining a bit more weight, I'm definitely feeling like a beached whale, and feeling more uncomfortable by the day. Lying on my stomach seems to be a distant memory. My back and hips are constantly hurting, despite the fact that I see my chiropractor and massage therapist on a regular basis, stretch and try to maintain good posture. I have mild to medium heartburn and acid reflux, which is not a pleasant thing to deal with already. My stomach seems to be sore all the time from all the stretching and growing my baby does.

Life has been quite busy for me. Every weekend (and many days during the week), I'm still trying to figure this whole baby thing out. I still don't complete have my head wrapped around the basics of changing a dirty diaper, and that I mean from the time you take a diaper off to the time you put a new one on. I may be just making things more confusing for myself by over thinking about it. I also don't know how to clothe a baby properly (although I bought a few cute clothing), and it never occurred to me that the you can layer clothing on a baby until a few days ago. I worry that the breastfeeding thing may not work out for me. I pretty much don't know anything!

The baby's been kicking quite a bit, definitely when I want to sleep or if I wake in the middle of the night, but it's doing more karate chops during the day as well. We went to the midwife's today and I asked how big my uterus is. Apparently everything that's sticking out, which is pretty amazing. And the kid's only taking up half the space still, so the rest is filled with amniotic fluid I imagine. I definitely notice sometimes when the kid does somersaults because I feel kicking going around in a circle.

I notice that my appetite has increase, and I want to eat more stuff. I'm trying to stay away from eating junk, but it's really hard sometimes! Never mind the foods that I'm not supposed to eat! I really miss those foods too. There is also a misconception that I should be eating for two. Technically, I only need an extra 300 calories per day, and that really amounts to one or two healthy snacks, not three extra meals. I definitely don't want pregnancy as a license to eat whatever I want and whenever I want. It's not healthy for me or the bebe. Yet my family insists that I'm not eating enough. Sigh.

I get stared at quite a bit at the gym. People wonder if I should still be exercising, and sometimes they ask. Today at my step class, the substitute instructor that I had was 5 months pregnant with her second one, and while she had to take frequent breaks, she was still able to jump around like crazy (I think was able to be as energetic as her when I was 5 months along, not anymore though). I'm also still doing weight training (at a much, much lower intensity and weights) to keep my body strong, and I have to say that I'm probably stronger now because I'm going to the gym more often, than I was even a year ago. Some women in some countries work hard labour in fields up until the time they give birth, I certainly think that my body can withstand a bit of exercise. By the way, I'm still doing Pilates, but that'll probably end by the end of February. I definitely have much less control over my ab muscles as I get bigger. If you watch me trying to do a roll up, it's, well, pretty much comical.

People also tell me the oddest things, and I feel there is so much misconception about the fragility of pregnant women and babies that I almost think people make it up. For instance:

• I shouldn't be moving so fast, the jiggling may hurt the baby.
• I shouldn't bounce up and down when doing step class or going up stairs, the bouncing motion may hurt the baby.
  
• I normally wear a set of keys around my neck at work, and the key chain is long enough so that the keys constantly hit my tummy. I shouldn't be doing that as that may hurt the baby. You should see how hard the midwife presses her fingers into my tummy when she's checking me out, and that doesn't hurt the baby one bit, so I don't think a bit of tapping against the stomach will affect it in any way.
• I've been told that I should stop exercising, I may hurt the baby. This was from someone who doesn't exercise.
  
• My favourite from my 95 year old grandmother: I shouldn't be wearing constricting clothing (I was wearing maternity clothing at the time), I may harm the baby by squeezing it too much: I shouldn't be wearing looser clothing and let everything hang, you know so the baby has more room to move. Gee, I wonder how my baby likes it every time I cough or sneeze, because my stomach muscles squeezes the baby like crazy. I'm definitely not telling her that I still do crunches.
  

My other biggest headache right now is figuring out my maternity leave. I wanted to give myself the flexibility of returning to work early if I wanted to, but which ended up complicating things. That turned out to be a lot of emails back and forth between myself and the HR lady. I'd managed to corner my boss today so that he can check over my job description, and in his typical fashion, he rearranged, added and chopped the entire thing, which means another edit. I need to submit it soon as HR has go through it's own rigmarole before it's even posted. Hiring at work is at least a 6 week process, if I'm lucky, so I need to get on this pronto!

My other headache is trying to figure out daycare, but that's another post unto itself. Sigh.