Well, I guess I'm not the one "shopping" necessarily, just making the list. Creating the registry has been quite the learning experience. It's kind of exciting, I have to admit that...I'm still scared and in disbelief and shocked and all those things, but I guess as the pieces of this new picture of life come together I am starting to see how it all works and therefore, it's not quite as intimidating. Yea, I'm sure I still cannot possibly imagine what it's like to birth a child and have a hundred sleepless nights in a row, but at least I am confident that I can pack up a stroller and put the right size clothes on the kid. At about this time last year I had to go to Target to shop for baby items to make a shower gift basket for a work event. I remember my boss calling to see what I had found as I was in Target, and I just stood in the middle of the isle and said I had no idea what on earth I was supposed to look for. No idea what wipes to buy, was stunned by the various sizes of diapers I had never considered, and completely confused by the gazillion kinds of bottles that exist. At that time, I thought ok, pick up cute things and whatever, I'm not going to have to deal with this for a looooong time, thank goodness! Now, I'm sitting here adding items to our Target registry fairly decisively. Yay for learning, I guess.
Spring has always been a favorite time of year for me, and summer, summer has always been run-around-hike-swim-beach-ride time. It's been semi-depressing to think of spring and summer this year...as my riding mileage won't exactly "increase" and Jonathan and I won't be literally running up the sides of mountains in Maine, but I finally convinced myself to do some more reading on exercise and cycling during pregnancy today. Unfortunately, I have a doctor who is rather by-the-book when it comes to heart rate maximums and all those things. I'm not a pro-cyclist and am not a "machine", but typically have a higher fitness level than most, so I don't think I fall into the "Traditional" bracket of pregnant women who should adhere to these strict stipulations on heart rate and such things. Still, I get quite scared when I see a high number on my HR monitor if I'm climbing a hill, and would feel terrible if I did something to cause a problem with the baby.
Looks like, from reading, the women who encounter problems-which generally means that their uterus shrinks or refuses to expand-are those who push as hard or harder than they did before pregnancy. They don's curtail their training at all. For some reason, our culture glorifies those who seem to defy natural human limitations and do ridiculous (oh, we call them "extraordinary") things while pregnant. What a mental mess...so we think it's cool when women do triathalons and continue to race and stuff while they're carrying a baby...geez, they're essentially super heros, right? On the other end of the spectrum, I don't think that life has to end and they must quit riding entirely, I guess I just dont understand how they can selfishly risk the health of their baby for whatever their pursuit may be.
So I'm caught in the middle of the cultural superhero biking/running mommas-to-be and the overly cautious "I'll take a complete vacation from my sport" ones. And, because I've been taught (culturally speaking) to value productivity and always work hard-whether it be a job or an atheletic pursuit...or just plain healthmy brain fights against calling the cautious ones "slugs" How messed up.
Anyhow, I'm not even sure where I was going with all of that...I guess just assuming the blog style of "journaling" for today, as I read through these articles and resolve to pursue my sport in a balanced, safe and un-mythical way for the next several months...separating cultural values and vain glory from a humble acceptance of something (someone really) coming before the activities I enjoy, or something like that. I wish we lived in the Lehigh Valley already...riding would seem at least a bit safer then, outside of the chaos of the city streets where we currently live. I think we escape the jaws of death at least 1 out of every 5 times we ride along Hunting Park Avenue in traffic. Thankfully, people in the city more often just run their mouth than actually do something to back up their talk...so we basically just get yelled at by motorists who don't understand the law and who are not content riding in the left lane on a 2 lane street. Then again, we experienced similarly inconsiderate parking lot drivers at Target in Allentown this past weekend.
Ok this is turning into a rambling mess. But AT LEAST I wrote...it's been awhile, and things have been stressful...I tend to not write in stressful times so the whole world doesn't have to share in our stresses and dramatic events of buying a house and such things. Not much else going on it seems....the past few days I've had trouble with food, ug...just certain things, like teriyaki chicken we ate last night...haven't thrown up, and it's not like terrible terrible nausea, just annoying litlte bouts of feeling "ick" as this baby grows. It IS growing by the way, my family has officially said they see a bump. Soon enough, those pregnant mother parking spaces will be mine. YES.
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