Little Guy is one month old.  And a couple of days ago, I made my first concerted effort at actual exercise since his birth.  There is a small fitness room at our apartment complex, which means both that I don't have to try to rush to the campus gym while Little Guy is sleeping and that I don't have to brave the heat/humidity for outdoor exercise.  I had only intended to walk on the treadmill for a while, but it was broken, so I went straight to the elliptical.  It was neither a very long nor a very rigorous workout, but it felt really good to get started again. 

I kept up some low-grade exercise through most of my pregnancy, but I've really been looking forward to working back up to some of my previous exercise habits.  In particular, I've really missed running.  Not that I am, by any stretch of the imagination, a serious runner.  But in the 6 or 7 months before I got pregnant, I started running, made it a normal part of my week, did a couple of short races, and discovered that, while I don't always love the act and experience of running, I really love the satisfaction of having done it.  During the first trimester of pregnancy, I barely had the energy to get out for a walk a few times a week, so I got out of the habit of running and was afraid to try to reinstate the habit once I had more energy but was also more pregnant. 

Sometimes I think perhaps it wasn't objectively such a big deal but was just what my pregnant brain decided to seize on, but I would often get really sad or jealous during pregnancy when I'd see other people running.  There's an annual marathon here in April; the route uses the bike path that we live right next to, so I heard/saw runners going by all morning.  And I felt really left out.  Which is a bit ridiculous, since I've never had any intention of participating in that particular race.  For one thing, I've never been in marathon shape (yet!), and for another, I do not envy those runners the race conditions that they had that day - 20+ mph winds and, eventually, a tornado warning.  But I still wanted to be out there. 

I expect it will still be a while before I'm really exercising consistently/normally, but all the same, I'm very happy to have the prospect of running back.

A sample of the first of many less-than-perfect family photo collections to come:

June Round-Up

We expected it to be an eventful month, but to some extent, it still caught us by surprise.

The month started with E's birthday, which was largely overlooked thanks to his last minute preparations for comps, which basically consumed the first full week of June.  Monday - Wednesday: about 7 hours of writing each day.  Thursday: take a break.  Friday: 2 hour orals with his committee.  Naturally, he passed.  Success!  A giant milestone down in the PhD process.  And we still had 10 days before Baby's due date to regroup.  Or so we thought.

By early Monday morning, I was having some tiny, irregular contractions.  No big deal.  They continued on and off at work on Monday; I was planning to work through Friday, but I started to think that I should take care of any critical work stuff sooner rather than later.

When I got up on Tuesday morning, I was bleeding a little bit.  We called my doctor's office and were told to come to labor & delivery so they could check it out.  When we got to the hospital, we were put in a triage room, where we basically spent the next couple hours watching Baby's heartbeat and contractions on the monitor.  The triage staff weren't too worried about the bleeding, and I was only barely starting to dilate, so initially it looked like I'd still be able to go to work for part of the day.

But then Baby's heart rate rose, with significant decelerations after contractions, which can mean maternal fever (which I didn't have) or some kind of infection.  So my doctor decided it would be good to try to deliver this Baby one way or another.  They moved us to a labor & delivery room and started some pitocin to see how Baby might handle induced labor.  That didn't go well; Baby's heart kept doing the same thing, so, long story short, we agreed to have a cesarean.  Thanks to a fast, smooth, and successful surgery, Owen was born soon after.

It turned out that the cord had been wrapped twice around his neck so, at best, he probably would have been pretty uncomfortable if we'd continued with normal labor.  During the surgery, E was sitting up next to my head.  As Owen was gradually emerging, my doctor said, "There's one nuchal...two nuchals."  When E and I compared recollections later, we discovered that we had both heard this as "nipple" instead of "nuchal".  Which was entertaining.  I remember thinking at the time, "Since when do they count baby nipples at birth?"

So basically none of that went as we would have imagined.  But Owen was very healthy - none the worse for the experience - and my recovery has gone very smoothly.  And I have to add that the staff at the hospital were wonderful: Sabre, the labor & delivery nurse who took kind and thorough care of us during the pitocin stage and who described to me from her own experience what to expect during the C-section so that I wouldn't be caught off guard; Aaron, the anesthesiologist who made sure I was well prepared for and comfortable through the surgery; Leslie, the OR nurse who stayed close and talked me through all the surgery prep (and deftly separated me from my bra at the last minute in spite of my being hooked up to an IV, etc.); several other surgery-related folks whose names I didn't catch; Laura, who kept an eye on me during the 2-hour recovery period; and several nurses who took good care of us for the next 2 days - Heather, Ceceilia, Nicole, and Pam.

The rest of the month has been spent getting used to having a family of 3!