Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Baby Bulge

I woke up on Monday morning and my belly bump was a little bigger than when I went to bed on Sunday night. I woke up this morning and it was significantly bigger. I had a couple of pairs of jeans that used to fit me since they were stretchy and sat low on the hips, but they don't fit anymore. I need to go shopping for more maternity clothes, or fatty clothes as I like to refer to them. Oh, and I can't suck in the belly any more. It's weird.

I am supposed to gain 20-25 lbs. during the pregnancy. The breakdown is: 3-5 lbs. in the first trimester, 1 lbs. every 2 weeks for weeks 13-36, and 1 lb./week for the last 4 weeks. Give or take a few lbs. of course. This means I should add about 300 calories to my diet every day, which is not a lot of food. I've basically been eating when I get hungry and my weight gain has been what I would like. I'm at the end of week 15 and I've probably gained about 5 lbs. It's actually kind of hard to really tell because I have a big fluctuation in weight between night and morning (about 3 lbs.). Since I tend not to drink a lot of water during the night, but I do pee at least twice during the night, it must all be water weight.

My mom was surprised that I'm not a lot heavier considering how much I eat. But I think what helps is that I have tried to stay pretty active. My doctor recommended that I get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day. I go on walks or walk/runs, ride my bike to work, and just started pilates.

I used to have time in a day to come home from work, go to the gym, make dinner, and even work on my crafts or watch a movie. Now I barely have enough time to do a couple of those things. Everything I do just takes a lot longer - figuring out what to wear in the morning, unloading the dishwasher, standing in front of the stove barefoot and pregnant, it all takes so much time.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

From pregnant friends' tales, I understand that yoga or pilates makes the third trimester + delivery way easier.

You might be interested in the bellaband so you don't have to buy as many maternity clothes:

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001054.php

Cleaty said...

Thanks for the bella band suggestion. I just ordered one!

Yeah, I was definitely motivated to do pilates because it's supposed to help. In general I have a bad/weak lower back so I want to keep my core as strong as possible.

Anonymous said...

Great! So when I come over I can workout with you! It's so much harder to keep that up when I'm travelling. Do you have a jumprope?

(Cripes, listen to me, I'm becoming a health nut.)

Cleaty said...

No jump rope, just some rope. But a nice home gym (weights, etc.), AND, we can go on a bike ride on the awesome trail. We can also look for birds.