What Activities are Best for Pregnancy?

I really need some of the endorphins you get from Exercise so I'm trying to find activities I enjoy. According to BabyCenter.Com here are some of the greats:

-Swimming: Healthcare providers and fitness experts hail swimming as the best and safest exercise for pregnant women. Swimming is ideal because it exercises both large muscle groups (arms and legs), provides cardiovascular benefits, and allows expectant women to feel weightless despite the extra pounds of pregnancy.

-Walking, Low-Impact Aerobics, Dancing, Yoga & Stretching.

I wonder if walking while shopping counts?

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Quotes from Buddha

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."

"Every human being is the author of his own health or disease. "

"However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?"

"It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways."

"No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. "

"The mind is everything. What you think you become. "

"You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection."

"You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger. "

"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it. "

A Funny Quote...supplied to me by Catharina

"No woman will ever be truly satisfied, because no man will ever have a chocolate penis,that ejaculates money."

Quote by Ernest Hemingway.

Pregnancy & Well Meaning Advice

Today I am 8 weeks pregnant! Woo hoo! It's still very unreal for me. Luckily, I requested an early ultrasound and my doctor didn't mind. So on Feb 18th, Tyler & I will hopefully be hearing the beating of one or two babies' hearts (still pushing for twins!). I think that'll help bring a little more realism to the situation for us.

I can't remember what I've already written about, so forgive me if this is review, but my regular doctor is retired from obstricians so I "had" to get a new doctor for the baby process. I was quite okay with this as, although I love that my doctor is female, she leaves a lot to be desired regarding her bedside mannor. Tyler & I got to meet with my new doctor, Dr. Phillpot, on Thursday. She normally doesn't accept new patients, though luckily for us, her husband says they need a new house so she's taking on a few more.

A little history I learned about Dr. Phillpot: SHE is 38 and just returned from mat leave with her fourth child. Her husband is a stay at home daddy and Dr.Phillpot seems to generally love what she does. She told us that she's excited to have a "new" family again that is going through the pregnancy for the first time as a lot of her patients are on there third and fourth kids and aren't really into the appointments etc. She's probably considered 'overweight' but she isn't super large and she just looks normal. Not super hot & not super ugly. She was really high energy with us during our appointment and very very nice.

Some of the information/guidelines she game me:

-she gave me a prescription for some prenatals. The have more folic acid in them and are geared for women with larger BMI's. I get to take a pink one in the morning & a blue one at night. Since they are prescription I'm hoping that means that our insurance will reimburse us for the cost! That would be a nice bonus as they are $45/month.

-ideally she wants me to keep my entire pregnancy weight gain to 10-15 lbs as I am already overweight. She would even be okay with me not gaining any weight or losing weight if I was still healthy. I completely get where she is coming from with these numbers as I've been doing some of my own research online and it coorelates with that.

-I am to avoid deli meats & unpasturized cheeses. The recent 'maple leaf' blunder brought to the public's attention that there is a chance of bacteria living on deli meats. This has always been true and is normally not a big deal but when you are pregnant you do have a lower risk tolerance.

-She gave me a name "Par X" to look up for a quiz to assess my physical ability and what kinds of exercise I should do. I was also told not to do waterslides, horse back riding...some of the more classic things to avoid.

-In terms of resources she said "Today's Parent" is a great magazine. This is awesome as I have a year's subscription sitting in my basement LOL

-She also suggested we check out http://www.earlyriskassessment.com/ to decide is we are going to do any pre-screening.

-We also found out there is an early education class for what it means to give birth in Red Deer (every city/town can have their own idiosyncrasies).

My first prenatal appointment is booked for Friday, March 13th but I have some routine bloodwork to do on this upcoming Tuesday. Having the bloodwork & ultrasound beforehand will be nice as she'll have data to draw from at our next appointment.

Now...the moment you tell people you are pregnant, you are opening the floodgates for advice. Some of it is greatly appreciated & comes from love but some of it is just downright annoying!

For instance, yesterday my sort've sister in law Kim was here and we mentioned we had gone for Dim Sum. She goes "you have to be careful what you eat you know". Thanks?! I, of all people, am pretty good at researching information. And for MOST pregnancy stuff, it boils down to your own personal risk/benefit scale. Her particular issue was over the potential for MSG and Mecury from any fish I might eat. I looked this up (as I love shrimp) and babycenter (a reliable resource I think) says that the Mercury scares come mostly from the larger fish that would be living in the ocean for longer periods of time and thus more suspectible to mercury. It says that most pregnant women can enjoy fish (tuna packed in water, shrimp) as most anyone does, up to three times a week. And that it's even good as there is so much Omega 3 in fish. The main things to avoid are things like shark & raw 0ysters. Really we should all avoid "raw" animals regardling of whether or not we are pregnant!

I guess I find this especially annoying because it's coming from the woman who drank coffee routinely, often indulged in a can of beer when I saw her & also has no fear of hot tubs during her pregnancy! Again, back to the personal risk/benefit scale. There are MILLIONS of things we can be concerned about when we are pregnant. Each woman has to do her only personal analysis of the risks and the benefits of the items in question and where it is worth it to her to take that chance.

For instance, I am currently taking anti-depressants. While it is usually best to be on zero medications when you are pregnant, my psychiatrist put it to me this way:

-you can be on a (more) even keel emotionally & pregnant or you can be like you were before and pregnant. Would you rather enjoy this pregnancy or possibly suffer through it? Also for the particular anti-depressent I'm on, Effexor, it is considered a very safe drug and shown no harm to fetus'. Since I suffer from depression I am also much more likely to suffer from post partum depression so I have to watch for sign of that (& have my loved ones watch for signs also).

So for me & my circumstances it is probably best to be on it. However, that being said, I do think it is effecting my nausea!!

Another item of arguement is Caffeine. For me, I am not planning on cutting it out entirely. I have curbed my coffee drinking for a while now so I don't really crave it but I still have some tea sometime and definitely chocolate! A lot of the info out there says that <300>

So I just totally threw up. Despite my bouts of nausea it was my first time actually throwing up. It was disgusting LOL I ran from the computer desk and barely had time to make it to our kitchen sink. I had a stomach full (tuna wrap & some pineapple I had been eating) and it ALL came up. The good news is that I felt better afterwards. I had read that the nausea can be hormonal so throwing up doesn't actually relieve the nausea. I'm happy to state in this instance, it did relieve it!

Dirty Laundry

I was watching a documentary tonight about Heidi Fleiss and her newest business venture to open a brothel in Nevada that had males available for hooking rather than females. It was really interesting glimpse into the person she is...seemingly very sad and lonely. And not at all titillating as I had hoped LOL

However she said something really poignant:

"If we all threw our dirty laundry into the center of the room, how quickly we would grab our own".

She said this in reference to how we all have crap/negative stuff in our lives but we've learned to deal with it when it's our own and wouldn't want anyone else's.

MIL's - A Follow Up

So last night (Thursday), Mary called us to see how our first appointment went with my new baby doctor as well as to apologize for her temper tantrum. She said her "ego got in the way" a term we frequently use with our new age stuff. I guess more than anything I just feel a 'badness' after having that kind of experience with someone. Not a badness in the way that I feel guilty or mad, just maybe like a ripple effect.

Rock Band with an Audience, Drunken M-I-L's, and other stories from this week

We went to Edmonton on Sunday because Vanessa, Tyler, my sister Calli & I had tickets to see "So You Think You Can Dance" on tour (the top ten dancers). Vanessa & Calli were coming down from Grimshaw so we got together on Sunday to have a little extra visiting/shopping time. Sunday night we went to Fiore's (Italian) for supper and met up with my ol' BF from Junior High Laurie. It was really cool to see her but albeit a little weird. When you have lost a friendship for that long and not really maintained much contact it takes some time to rebuild a connection. Laurie & I had a falling out as well back then so it doesn't help...however I had fun chit chatting with her & hope she had a good evening too. Also the food was GREAT!

Monday - Vanessa, Calli & I went shopping at Kingsway Mall (to avoid the hike that is usually involved with shopping at West Ed). I'd say we had a mostly successfull shopping day as we fulfilled most everyone's wish list. At one point I was really worried about upchucking my cookies in the Mariposa dressing room waiting area but the feeling passed so that was good! I did end up returning a couple of the items I bought a few days later, but still good shopping time. That night we went to SYTYCD and it was AMAZING! Vanessa & I had seats in row 13, which turned out to be only 7 rows from the stage. We had a great view of the magnificent dancer bodies and what they were capable of...Calli & Tyler had seats in row 28 which were decent but definitely not as fabulous as our seats. You may be wondering why we sat as we did...long story boiling down to Vanessa & I planned to get tickets and Calli & Tyler were "after thoughts" so to speak.

Tuesday I had plans to go out for dinner with my friend Danielle, however she was under the weather so she ended up cancelling. I was uber disappointed as I haven't seen her in a few months & she is PREGNANT (& probably adorable) but you can't plan life sometimes. I'm sure I'll see her soon :-D

We thought about going home that night but Tyler really wanted to go to "Rock Band" hosted by the Bear radio station at the River Cree Casino on Wednesday night. I didn't want to be bored for another day but we decided to go for Dim Sum for lunch on Wednesday & that was reason enough for me to stay LOL Dim Sum, if you're not familiar, is authentic chinese food like shrimp & rice paper...kind of looks disgusting but some of it is completely delicioius. We don't have any Dim Sum in Red Deer so far as I know so it's a special treat.

Ugh, I'm running out of time cuz i have to leave for an appointment! Okay here's the jist of Wednesday night:

Rock Band - really cool, quite well attended. Many people were playing on Expert and getting in the 90 percentages. We hooked up with a couple in their 50s who play guitar & bass (John & Karen - very neat people), Tyler played the drums & I sang a song. In front of people!! It was "Don't Fear the Reaper". I was very freaked out (I got all blotchy & red) but I thought it was important to get out of my comfort zone & do it. I wasn't even able to get drunk first as I am all pregnant LOL

So we had lots of fun & I came back to Mary's all hyper...she had been drinking, probably quite a bit. Well Keisha, her boyfriend's 15 yr-old granddaughter who's living with them, was going to have a snack and the pantry was a mess so she started organizing it (as Mary & Robert have been asking her to do since she moved in). Out of no where, Mary starts going off on how "any idiot" can see & smell when food goes bad and just cuz it has an expiry date that's passed doesn't mean it's bad and we should through it out...this escalated to pretty much a full on tantrum about how "everyone" criticises her all the time and how we must not think she's a good enough person, etc. I tried to calm her down saying "take a deep breath" and "we love you" and giving her a hug (meanwhile I am crying in my typical reaction to outbursts of emotion). She just continued for maybe a full five minute rant and then Robert came out and she flipped on him (about not helping her with housework & how they don't have enough cupboard space...) and then she went for a smoke. It was kind of bad...and I still don't have the greatest feeling about it. Plus what what we all found frustrating (Tyler, Keisha & I) is that Mary complains about her fridge & how much room she doesn't have and how disorganized it is, but then she was mad & offended when we tried to help... Anyways that's just never fun to experience those things.

Gotta run!

Yes! (then ugh...)

I feel really, off, right now. I'm not sure if it's nausea or heart burn or what but I feel yucky. The good news is, I'm pregnant! After about a year of half assed trying and one month of actually charting my cycle and "baby dancing" when directed I peed on a stick and it finally tested postive. (the picture here isn't my actual test, but you get the idea)

So now I am about 7 ish weeks pregnant. According to the really cool site www.fertilitygal.com my baby is about 1/2 inch big and today is forming the genitalia the decides if it's going to be a boy or a girl. Preferably we'd like to have one of each in one shot (a.k.a. twins), and the average chance of that IS 1/90 births so entirely possible :-D

So we're pretty excited. Some say you should wait until the end of your first trimester before announcing that you're expecting, but for most of those in our lives I really couldn't hold my tongue! I think most of those who read my blog have been told (but their may be a few straglers out there so sorry). That being said I'm not ready for the general "public" to find out so I was a little freaked when a relative of Tyler's wrote on my facebook WALL a congrats. I deleted it quickly hoping no one really read it or got it's meaning. So let that be a warning to all you readers right now, no public facebook messages!!!

So back to how I'm feeling right now. I'm not sure if it's exactly morning sickness or what but I feel kind of icky. I feel best when I am actually eating, but pretty yicky after eating. Not a good position to be in cuz I just want to eat all the time now!

Hmm, my in-laws are home (we're chillin' at their house right now) so I'm gonna sign off right now...