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.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Friday, July 6, 2012
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
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!
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!
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
So Much Deliciousness
Last weekend we picked blueberries and raspberries at a farm that we've been to every year that we've been here. The fruit is always so awesome that we went back on Saturday to pick more blueberries. In all, we brought home 7 quarts of these:
And 4 gallons (yes, 4 gallons!) of these:
And 4 gallons (yes, 4 gallons!) of these:
Did I mention that this great farm charges only $12 for a gallon of blueberries? Well worth an hour in the sun to fill up a bucket. I've been eating berries by the fistful.
On an unrelated note, 37 weeks:
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Things to Celebrate
Last week we paid off the last of my student loans from grad school - 6 years after I finished. Pretty good, I think! Of course, we still have a couple of E's loans to work on, but they're coming along.
So what did we do to celebrate? Well, nothing officially. But on Saturday we packed up a few friends (and some donuts) and went to pick strawberries. We came home with this:
Yes, that is 12 quarts of strawberries (for $30!). In the last few days, much of this stash has gone into our bellies and the rest into our freezer.
Our garden is also coming along. Every day (or every few hours, it seems), there is more growth.
Haven't witnessed it yet ourselves, but we're told that the tomatillo had blossoms as of this morning!
So what did we do to celebrate? Well, nothing officially. But on Saturday we packed up a few friends (and some donuts) and went to pick strawberries. We came home with this:
Yes, that is 12 quarts of strawberries (for $30!). In the last few days, much of this stash has gone into our bellies and the rest into our freezer.
Our garden is also coming along. Every day (or every few hours, it seems), there is more growth.
Haven't witnessed it yet ourselves, but we're told that the tomatillo had blossoms as of this morning!
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Garden!
Yesterday, much to our delight, we spent a few hours with a friend/neighbor constructing and planting a couple of raised beds in her yard. We've often wished we could do a garden, but have never lived anyplace where we had property available for gardening onsite and/or have never looked into community garden plots at the right time of year and/or have never thought it was worth the undertaking to feed only me while E is gone during the summers. But this year E is home, our friend around the corner has a bunch of yard space available, and all three of us wanted to go for it! So we did.
To make the beds, E and I had some boards available from a previous project. I could leave it at that, but the back story is half of the fun.
When we moved here we had, as usual, a whole bunch of books. Normally, when we move to a new place, we get several bookshelves off Craigslist (which may or may not actually look good or coordinate with one another) and fill them up. This time we thought, "Why don't we just make shelves of our own, designed however we choose, that are big enough to hold our book collection?" Great idea, right? The answer is more or less yes, as long as your standards aren't too high. Because, let's face it, our approach to DIY is a little rough around the edges - think more utility, less aesthetic, and definitely less resale value.
We decided we wanted two sets of shelves - each 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide. So immediately after moving into our (previous) apartment, when we didn't really have any other furniture yet, we bought some boards and set to work on sanding, staining, and finishing them. They were spread out across stacks of boxes while they dried. And then we put them together with some pretty basic brackets and screws.
Really, the wood looked pretty nice with the staining and all, although I should note that, during assembly, we became keenly aware of all the knots, warps, and slight variations in length of these boards. Most importantly, the finished product was big. And with the cheap brackets, and no bracing on the back, they weren't exactly the strongest construction design on the bookshelf market, particularly once they were loaded up with books. But perhaps that's the beauty of living in a small apartment: given the limited space, we more or less had to wedge the shelves in between, say, bed and wall, so we didn't haveany too much trouble with the shelves leaning at crazy angles.
But then, last winter, we started to get ready for whenever the next big move will come. One thing we opted to do, which we never have previously, was to get rid of most of the books. E started listing them on Amazon, and they started getting shipped off to readers all over the country. And eventually, the giant shelves were unnecessary, so we took them apart and stashed the boards away (in E's office, which is another story).
Until we started brainstorming the Garden. And now, our knotty, warpy boards have a second life.
We nailed them together, covered them in plastic to try to stave off any weird leaching from the finish, and dumped in the dirt.
2 beds have been filled with tomatoes (Roma, yellow pear, tomatillo), jalapenos, bell peppers, onions, corn, peas, zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant, lettuce, spinach, and cantaloupe, and a third bed is ready to be planted.
To make the beds, E and I had some boards available from a previous project. I could leave it at that, but the back story is half of the fun.
When we moved here we had, as usual, a whole bunch of books. Normally, when we move to a new place, we get several bookshelves off Craigslist (which may or may not actually look good or coordinate with one another) and fill them up. This time we thought, "Why don't we just make shelves of our own, designed however we choose, that are big enough to hold our book collection?" Great idea, right? The answer is more or less yes, as long as your standards aren't too high. Because, let's face it, our approach to DIY is a little rough around the edges - think more utility, less aesthetic, and definitely less resale value.
We decided we wanted two sets of shelves - each 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide. So immediately after moving into our (previous) apartment, when we didn't really have any other furniture yet, we bought some boards and set to work on sanding, staining, and finishing them. They were spread out across stacks of boxes while they dried. And then we put them together with some pretty basic brackets and screws.
Really, the wood looked pretty nice with the staining and all, although I should note that, during assembly, we became keenly aware of all the knots, warps, and slight variations in length of these boards. Most importantly, the finished product was big. And with the cheap brackets, and no bracing on the back, they weren't exactly the strongest construction design on the bookshelf market, particularly once they were loaded up with books. But perhaps that's the beauty of living in a small apartment: given the limited space, we more or less had to wedge the shelves in between, say, bed and wall, so we didn't have
But then, last winter, we started to get ready for whenever the next big move will come. One thing we opted to do, which we never have previously, was to get rid of most of the books. E started listing them on Amazon, and they started getting shipped off to readers all over the country. And eventually, the giant shelves were unnecessary, so we took them apart and stashed the boards away (in E's office, which is another story).
Until we started brainstorming the Garden. And now, our knotty, warpy boards have a second life.
We nailed them together, covered them in plastic to try to stave off any weird leaching from the finish, and dumped in the dirt.
2 beds have been filled with tomatoes (Roma, yellow pear, tomatillo), jalapenos, bell peppers, onions, corn, peas, zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant, lettuce, spinach, and cantaloupe, and a third bed is ready to be planted.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
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