Pregnancy (The Second Time Around)

31 weeks. I will be honest and say that this picture is deceiving. I think its because I'm wearing a print, my belly looks quite tiny, but I assure you in reality, I am huge. And I feel huge. I have gained 16 lbs now, which means I'll probably gain at least 25 by the time everything is said and done and that is much more than the mere 11 I gained with Will.

I am warning you now that the rest of this post will be complaining. And after I complain for a little, I'll probably feel better about everything. But if you are someone who is annoyed when someone complain-blogs (myself included), just skip on down to another post.

Let's see... for starters, my feet are purple all the time. I nice deep purple at that due to poor circulation. And my lower back feels like someone took at swing at me with a Louisville Slugger by the end of the day. And I've had constant headaches for the past few weeks and between my back or my head, I'm pretty much always in pain.

In the third trimester with Will, I walked 5 miles a day and didn't really even feel tired. I felt like I had a good workout and would have kept walking if I had the time. Since our cruise, I can't walk more than 2 minutes without feeling like I'm having a contraction. After a few failed attempts, I decided to swear off power walking for the rest of the pregnancy and switch to bike riding. This has also been taken off the list as I started feeling oh-so-tight in my nether regions last week while riding the upright bike, and have now digressed to the Grandpa style, lazyboy reclined bike. My forms of exercise have been reduced to this, pilates, and swimming. And pilates is really a joke. I keep going only to make myself feel better and try to relieve pain in my back. I mean, really, who can roll up from a lying down position with a basketball strapped to their belly? And I count it as part of my kegals, so I can make another check off the list.

Since last week, I've had intense menstrual cramps a few times a day and when I asked the Dr. about it, she said not to worry until its a few times in an hour. However, they did find a UTI while they were down there, so I was sent home with some meds. A few days ago, the girl down south come down with a nasty yeast infection and when I went back to the Dr. (seriously, I have never felt discomfort like this before) she took one look at me and said, "Ooooo, it looks angry down there." Yep, it feels pretty angry too. Like possesed-running-around-with-an-ax, angry. Another yay, for modern medicine and hopefully we're on the mend.

I just feel so much more "pregnant" this time around with everything that entails. I never had a single Braxton Hicks with Will and I have them around the clock with Duke. And yes, that's his name. Well, I mean what we've called him inutero. We called Will "Junior" and we started calling this little guy "Duke" when we found out he was a boy. Just about every day, Cortney looks at me with a semi-frown and says, "I'm so sorry." He feels pretty bad about my current state, but in reality it's probably not that bad, its just way more "pregnant" than last time.

Oh, and how can I forget my varicose veins? My right thighs has lumpy blue veins all over it. These appeared a few weeks ago and I literally cried when I saw them. You see, me and varicose veins have a history. They run in my family. My mom, aunt, and Grandma all have terrible varicose veins and I was taught to hate them from a young age. I always thought that I would beat the genes because I'm young, healthy, and much more active than my mom, aunt, and Grandma were at my age, so naturally, I shouldn't be plagued with them, right? Wrong. There's a glimmer of hope they'll go away once the kid gets here and if not, some medical expert is going to take care of them and remove them from my life. Forever.

Duke is so low. And when I say low, I mean Cape Town, low. I've nicknamed him the "gopher" because it just seems like he keeps burrowing himself lower and lower and in his efforts to do so, my pelvic bones are taking quite the beating. I guess he's getting ready for wrestling matches with Will. And stretch marks. Ugh. I got 3 little stretch marks 2 weeks before Will was born, but Duke has done quite a number on me. I'm pretty sure my belly will look like Captain Hook's map to buried treasure before long. Good thing Cortney works with the plastic surgeons a lot. I'm starting my campaign for them to do a complementary laser treatment on my mother wounds. I'll keep you posted.

Ok, that's enough for now. Get back to work Amy. You're almost there.