Happy Humpday!
A lot has been going on in the last few weeks. Today I’ll recap details of my pregnancy, my workouts, and some interesting situations that have come up.
26 weeks (almost)
I haven’t had any appointments at the birth center since my last post. I have one coming up this week. This may be when they do the test for gestational diabetes. If it’s still too early, I’ll have to come back to do the test in a week or so. I’ve started religiously plugging in my essential oil diffuser near the bed every night and I am pretty sure it’s been helping my dry/itchy nose. I haven’t had a single nose bleed since I started using it and I am far less stuffy and itchy than before. Also, my sneezing is down from 50x/day to about 10x/day. That was easy. Foot pain is one of my biggest complaints right now. 
As far as I know I’ve gained at least 15 pounds so far. Even being on my feet coaching for 2 hrs in a row kills my feet. I have been wearing my old workout shoes because they are 1/2 size bigger than my current ones. This feels a lot better. When I’m at the gym coaching, often I’ll be walking around in my socks as this is better than all of my shoes. My other main physical issue I currently deal with off and on is how uncomfortably full I feel a lot of the time. From what I can tell (shocker) this is directly related to how well my intestines are keeping up with what I eat. To give you a comparison: it’s like coming home, starving after a workout, and finishing off a large pizza all by yourself (small female) in about 5 minutes flat. I know how this feels because I’ve done it. That feeling at least goes away. I feel the same as that with my prego, bloated, belly, but for dayyyyssss. Uggghhh. Aside from these few things, I still feel pretty darn good. I continue to be amazed at how many headaches i don’t have. I had far more headaches in my life in the last few years before I started seeing my current chiropractor and getting my atlas adjusted. I also don’t have much back or hip pain either. Nothing outside the usual for me anyway.
About 10 days ago my husband and I went to Lake Tahoe for an employee appreciation weekend for his work. This was a nice little escape from the city. We stayed in a really nice lodge in Incline Village (north lake) and had fun activities each day. These consisted of gourmet smores on the beach, amazing dinners, a catamaran day trip, and a tour and night of fun at the Ponderosa Ranch. While it was awesome and jam packed with fun, I was exhausted. I got no afternoon nap (which I’ve come to rely on) and was up on my feet for most of the time. I can’t complain too much though, we definitely felt catered to and pampered all weekend.
CrossFit
Lately I’ve stepped up the intensity and longevity of my workouts. I was feeling sluggish for a while and taking it easy all the time didn’t make me feel good. Last week I did 3 CrossFit workouts at the gym and it felt great. I also did my own things, but that is the most that I’ve done for group CrossFit classes. I even completed one of the workouts (overhead squats + burpees) at the “rx” weight. This made me feel good. I continue to feel the best during and after working out. I swam last week as well. I think I will continue to swim at least once a week. Last summer I was swimming a lot (at least 2x a week) and loved it. I like it now because I don’t feel so heavy in the water and it’s a great stretch for the abdominals. Also, I can still do flip turns! Woohoo!
Just recently I’ve set my road bike back up on the trainer downstairs as well. I’m feeling the need to get more cardio in. Lifting continues to feel good, but I’ve been letting myself slack on the cardio side more. My Olympic lifting ability changes from day to day. Some days, when I’m feeling really full and crampy, it is a no go. The quick, jumping, movement doesn’t feel good, so I stop. Other days, when things are feeling pretty good, doing a light weight that I end up “muscling out” more feels just fine. I’ve also continued to do kettlebell snatch and kettlebell clean & jerk. I’m using a thin blue rogue band to assist me in pull-ups but am still able to do kipping pull-ups. I found that strange because it’s such a quick, dynamic, movement, but it doesn’t bother me at all. I did “Fran” last week with the blue band and a little lighter weight and again I felt wonderful afterwards. The video below is last Saturday’s overhead squat + burpee workout. Tonight at CrossFit I did another overhead squat workout and was really surprised at how much wrist pain I was having. I wear wrist wraps for support, but those weren’t helping. I kept making my grip more narrow because I had so much pain and weakness in my wrists taking a wide overhead grip. This made me extremely frustrated because I love overhead squats and hate that my silly little wrists were my limiting factor. My legs and core felt fine. I also probably got a little more upset and frustrated at myself because I was running on about 3.5 hours sleep today. Last night did not go so well. I miss being competitive during workouts and pushing myself to my physical limits. I am realizing more and more what a stress/life outlet this is for me.
To be honest, the most difficult physical movement part of my day is putting my freaking shoes on! Especially with sluggish intestines. I feel like an obese person. I have to put my foot up on a chair and lean to the side and wiggle in. Afterwards I’m out of breath and feel pathetic. Ridiculous. I can only imagine the next few months. No wonder people go to slip-ons or velcro. Tonight I showed up at the gym for warm-up with my shoes untied because 1) sometimes it’s just too much effort, and 2) I was going to be changing into my lifting shoes for the workout shortly anyway. Two of the members noticed this, and, being concerned I’d trip, each tied a shoe for me. It was so nice! Now THAT is service.
School
Some of you may know that I also am a CrossFit Kids P.E. teacher at a local charter school in the area. This is through my gym, CrossFit Cypher. There are 3 of us coaches at the school this year instead of just two like last year. I am there M, W, F for half days. I work with 1st-8th grade. Most of the kids I know from last year and it’s been fun seeing some of them again. Others, not so much, haha.
Throughout my pregnancy I haven’t ran into that much controversy with continuing my strength training and CrossFit. I’ve only had to defend/explain myself briefly to a couple skeptics, or, what I like to refer to as uneducated or naive people 🙂 What I really hadn’t anticipated is the shocked faces and comments from the kids at school. They were not aware in the spring that I was pregnant so most of them are really excited and surprised. They have a ton of questions and most want to feel my belly everyday that I see them. I don’t mind this at all since they are just innocently curious. But now that they know, some of them are utterly confused when I do burpee/push-up/squat, etc demos. Or when I jog with them. So many of them ask, “why are you doing that if you’re pregnant??” or just flat out tell me, “you shouldn’t be doing that you know”. And they’re not even witnessing me doing an actual workout. An 8th grader last week went over to one of the other coaches and asked her, “isn’t she going to lose the baby from doing those things?”. It’s crazy! I don’t know where they learn these things, but they are all very concerned about me. I don’t have enough time in each class to address all the questions, so I just reply, “It’s perfectly safe for me to continue to do the things I’ve been doing for so long. It’s healthy to workout during pregnancy. It’s actually a lot more unhealthy if I were to just lay around with my feet up all day”. I’m not sure if they get this information from their families or elsewhere. I wish that I had the time to do a school assembly about it so I could address all their questions and concerns and set them straight.
I’m glad that I challenge their views, and maybe in the future they will remember that I safely exercised all throughout my pregnancy. On a disturbing side note, there is an 8th grade girl that I know from last year that is also pregnant right now. Blows my mind…….I think about myself back in 8th grade and how getting pregnant was not a worry of mine at all. Oh, kids these days.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and responses on any of the things I’ve discussed! Or, just your own stories as well. Please don’t hesitate.
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