Evolution of Pregnant Running

I still have 9 weeks to go, but I was thinking about how much running has changed as I've progressed in pregnancy during my run today.

At first, you are super excited to get that positive pregnancy test, but you don't really feel any different. You constantly wonder if you're going too hard or if you should be slowing down, so you check yourself during every run.

Too bad I didn't spring for the digital test

As the first trimester sets in, you start to feel sick and tired. Running still isn't that bad, as long as you can repress your deep desire to dry heave long enough to get it done.

That cat is basically your fetus

When the second trimester hits, you are probably starting to show with an adorable baby bump and you don't feel like death warmed over every day when you wake up. Running still feels pretty good and you have to mentally remind yourself to slow down. You also finally get to rock the "adorable pregnant runner look" and people can finally see why you've been slowing down and passing on races.

This is how you feel inside

End of the second trimester and beginning of the the third: You don't have to remind yourself to slow down, you ARE slow. You feel your outdoor runs in every joint you have and runs that used to be short weekday runs are now your idea of a long weekend run. In group running you are now the person slowing everyone else down and you feel like an out of shape rhino running with a herd of gazelle.

I'm basically the Chris Farley of the group now

I'm interested to see how running changes over the next 9 weeks. Unless a doctor tells me to stop, it looks like I'm not giving this up. If I'm still running with this rib issue, then I guess I'm more stubborn than even I imagined.

It seems that my desire to keep running even if it hurts has passed to Faith because she had a little run in with the driveway today, but she didn't let it slow her down.

You should see the other guy!

Her problem is that her body runs faster than her legs. Every one of her "sprints" is really more like a controlled fall and I'm amazed she doesn't fall more often. She was a little upset about catching herself with her face, but within a few minutes, she was back to running across the driveway as fast as she could go.

I'm too busy to WALK places, I must run!

If you fall and draw blood during a run, do you cut the run short or finish it anyway? I always finish it, but to be completely honest, I've never had the opportunity to cut it short because I'm usually not close to my car or out in the woods and running back is the only option.

I love school

Today was the open house at Faith's new school, and I have to say this: I already love school so much. I thought she was going to be really anti-social and refuse to be put down, but they had a whole wall of trucks in the classroom. She saw that and yelled "TRUCK!" and never looked back (well, not for a few minutes anyway).

My toys are lame compared to THOSE toys

My husband had a late morning meeting off-site, so he was able to come to the open house and meet her teachers with me today. I enjoy having him meet people with me since it seems to end the need for people to question me about why my daughter is so tall.

Don't worry Daddy, I still blame the nose picking habit on Mommy.

Right now there are only 6 two year olds in her class, which is awesome because that's a 3:1 student teacher ratio. Even then, I have no idea how they do it all. I can barely handle giving one toddler lunch and getting her down for a nap, but 6-8 of them at once? Witchcraft has to be involved, right?

We stayed at the open house for about an hour to let Faith get comfortable in the classroom and she even sat on one of the teacher's laps, so I'm going to take that as a good sign. Her first day is next Tuesday and I'm hoping I'm not the first parent called to come pick up their kid early because they won't stop crying. I fully anticipate getting that call, but I'm just hoping I'm not first.

Her "school" is just one day a week from 9am to 2pm and she gets to do crafts (what kind of crafts do 2 year old do??) and lots of playtime, then lunch and a nap. It's going to rock her world. I hope she realizes how awesome life is when your day always has a nap time.

CHERISH IT

Her school starts next week, so that gives me 2 months of one day of the week with 5 hours of free time. I don't even know what I'm going to do with myself.

Eventually, I will use Tuesdays as a day to go grocery shopping with just the baby or to schedule baby doctor appointments since they go so often for shots at first.  Tuesdays will eventually be my "I only have to run with the single jogging stroller today!" days, which I'm sure will be a nice change from pushing the large double stroller.

The best part of this school thing isn't going to be my free time (which will be sweet, don't get me wrong), but how exhausted it makes Faith. Even just an hour there seemed to really tire her out (2 hour nap and easier than usual bedtime for the win!), and when she is there all day her nap time will be shorter than usual and I'm betting that will be an early bed time day. I love early bed time days.

I'm thinking of new ways to make Mommy's life harder, don't worry

Yes, she is just eating the insides out of all those ravioli in that picture. It's her new thing.

Random aside: There are like 14 two year olds in her whole classroom (but no more than 8 are there on any given day of the week) and the only double name is Faith! I was so shocked to see Faith's "name apple" on the bulletin board say "Faith K." and have it next to a "Faith F." At least they aren't there on the same days of the week so it shouldn't be too confusing for her, but it struck me as hilarious! I really thought I had picked a less common name for her, whoops!

I had to take today off from both running and walking because the rib pain is pretty bad again (stupid toy car incident!) and I had a bad night last night. I'm hoping to wake up feeling better tomorrow and be able to run. At this point, even I'm getting tired of hearing my whining about rib pain so it needs to go away already. Feeling sorry for yourself gets old really quickly so I might move on to Plan B (Code Name: Pretend Nothing is Wrong).

If you laughed at this, then we'd probably get along

Which would you rather have: a dislocated rib or a job being a teacher for a room full of 2 year olds? I think I'd rather have the rib issue. At least there are drugs for that and I never have to wipe bodily fluids off a kid to which I'm not biologically bonded.

Punishment Playtime

In general, having a dog and having a child are nothing alike. Until I can put my kid in a crate when I go out or drop her at a kennel at a moment's notice, I'm sticking to that statement.

However, there is some overlap in your parenting and dog training style. Whenever the dog acts up, my knee-jerk reaction is that she needs more exercise. Tired dogs are good dogs, right? Now when Faith acts up, I also think the solution must be that she needs more exercise. Besides, Michelle Obama keeps lecturing me about getting her outside an hour a day. When the first lady tells you to do something, you have to listen...I'm pretty sure that's how our government system works.

I try to get Faith outside as much as possible, even though it's a huge pain in the butt for me. I'm either constantly dragging her plastic car around (with her in it) because she got "stuck" or if I involve water, then the clean up for that is often as long as the playtime itself.

I could take her to the playground, but Ms. Anti-social won't run and play there and just stands and glares at the other children.

I'm not anti-social, I'm just too cool for other kids.

Last night around 2am I was woken up to the sound of Faith shouting "WHOA!" and then laughing. I guess she's been watching old Blossom episodes?

I blame all those new Old Navy commercials with Joey and Blossom

She was laughing and talking to herself until almost 4am. I only had to go into her room once, but I can't fall back asleep when she's giggling and clapping and randomly shouting every word she knows. I have no clue how my husband can sleep through someone shouting "ELEPHANT!" at 3am, but he can.

We had a really rough nap time today (she fought it for two long hours), so as soon as I woke her up I made her go back outside because I'm determined to get more sleep tonight.

I didn't feel like messing with getting the sprinkler out and dealing with the muddy clean-up, so I just had her playing with her plastic car in the driveway. In theory, this is a solo activity for a toddler, but mine is a horrible driver.

This tree came out of NOWHERE

My GPS said to make a left turn

Officer, I only had one sippy cup of juice, I swear I'm not drunk.

We have a large drainage ditch on one side of our front yard and she knows to not drive her car off that side of the driveway. She was feeling her oats today and was backing up her car as fast as her little sneakers could push and gave me a shit-eating grin as she got closer and closer to the ditch. I yelled at her to stop (so effective) but she went over the side into the ditch before I could waddle-run over there in my flip-flops.

Luckily those plastic cars are built for hard use and it rolls pretty slowly on grass, but it still tipped over and scared the crap out of Faith. I'll be interested to see if she stays away from the ditch side of the driveway now!

I was going to post today about how my rib is starting to finally improve and the pain is better, but I think I undid a lot of my progress with my sprint across the driveway and mad dive to catch the car as it went down the hill. I even slept without my painkillers last night (and ran 6 miles yesterday and 7 today), and I felt pretty good today...until Faith tried to break me. It must be some kind of sisterly agreement they have, I just wonder how they are communicating.

I managed to get into physical therapy for an appointment on Friday, which may or may not help my rib pain. My doctor was unsure, but he said it couldn't hurt to try. The PT place was really booked, but my doctor's office actually called them and asked them to fit me in so that's how I got in so quickly. I'm hoping it makes a difference, but probably the best thing would be if I could avoid doing stupid things like trying to prevent a toy car full of 32lbs of toddler from rolling down a hill.

I know you didn't just tell everyone how much I weigh.

Maybe that toddler treadmill isn't such a silly idea after all?


Do you think of exercise as a cure-all for unwanted kid and dog behavior? 

Striking Similarities

As Faith gets older and more vocal, she gets funnier to be around and she'll often say or do something that will crack us up. My husband and I were discussing the other day that taking care of a toddler has many similarities to being the sober one in charge of a very drunk person. Here's a list of ways that a toddler and a very drunk person are the same:

Can't be trusted to go on the stairs alone.

They can go from laughing to ANGRY in an instant. For a toddler it might be that you said "No" when they asked for cookies and for a drunk person, maybe it's the bartender who said no.

They can't dance at all, but they really enjoy trying. For toddlers, this usually entails jerky movements that have no rhythm. For a drunk person...well, I guess it's pretty much exactly the same. 

Prone to tantrums, especially when overtired and/or hungry (or for drunk people, toward the end of the night). There is nothing more dramatic than offering the "wrong" snack to a hungry, tired toddler. I'm pretty sure Faith has said this to me in toddler-ese:

You have to keep tabs on their bodily functions to avoid embarrassing situations. At least (most) toddlers wear diapers so you don't have to worry about them peeing on the floor at a bar. Or worse.

Yes, this is seriously the kind of discussion my husband and I have. Then we watch Faith try to run in a straight line and laugh.

How DARE you compare me to a drunk person?

I have no clue where you get ideas like that.

Which would you rather deal with: a toddler or a drunk person? 

Pros and Cons

I have made some progress in the grief process of accepting my rib injury. I started with shock (How on earth can someone hurt themselves this badly while sleeping?) and moved onto denial (I bet it's actually my gallbladder! I can fix this by avoiding delicious food!) and now I'm in the depression phase. How can you not feel sad for your displaced (or cracked) rib?

That poor sad rib has all of its belongings in a shopping cart

I've been thinking about benching the idea of running for a while, but I can argue both sides of the case:

Pro-running:

My doctor didn't tell me to not run and he said if I still enjoy it, then I might as well do it if the pain allows.

I don't think avoiding exercise will speed healing. Most of my pain happens during day to day activities (and pesky stuff like inhaling)

Walking actually hurts just as much as running (if not more) because I swing my arms more in walking and moving my right arm causes discomfort. This also makes alternative exercise like elliptical use or swimming unappealing.


Anti-running:

I'm not sleeping well (beyond the 6 hours I get from the painkiller) and also not eating well (pain is apparently a great appetite suppressant) and maybe I should be conserving my energy.

The pain makes running less than fun, but the pain also makes everything less fun so I'm not sure how much weight to give this reason.


The bottom line is that I still don't know how to handle running and rib pain. I'm considering trying to take a whole week off and see if that helps, but if it's a dislocated rib it may not make a difference and I've just made myself more crazy than necessary.

This is why I never believe any of those chicks on "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant". Sure you didn't honey, sure you didn't. It's such a subtle process. I totally forget that I'm pregnant all the time.

This pain brought to you by your friendly neighborhood fetus

Ok, enough pregnancy whining. I did run some this weekend (4 miles of running, 2 miles of walking...over 2 days. So hardcore, I know), but most of the weekend was spent hanging out with Faith and my husband.

What about the dog? No one ever hangs out with me.

Today we drove up to Annapolis to pick up my husband's new suit and get lunch (since it takes almost 2 hours to get there, you can't just pick up the suit and go home without feeling silly). We hit up P.F. Changs for lunch and Faith acted like a model kid while we waited for food. I wish I could take credit for her good behavior, but she seriously just came this way.

I'm such a little lady

Mommy, you fidget more in your seat than me

The funny thing (at least we found it funny) is that Faith was really unhappy with quality of the crayons they provided with the kid's menu. She was doing what we call "Angry Drawing":




After lunch we walked over to a frozen yogurt place across the street from the suit store and Faith and I got dessert while my husband went to meet with the tailor and try on his suit.

OMG I'm a real blogger now.

Mommy, I get 2 spoonfuls and THEN you get one...got it?

We got stuck in the yogurt shop because a freaking crazy storm rolled in.

Everyone was standing in doorways like they were made of sugar, so it wasn't just me

Eventually my husband finished up with his suit stuff and brought us an umbrella (yes, I'm made of sugar) so we could get back to the car reasonably dry. We have had crazy storms all day since then, so I guess my "wait it out in the frozen yogurt shop and hope for sympathy refills" plan had some flaws.

If the frozen yogurt wasn't enough to make today awesome, then I maybe I'll get to see more of this tonight on the True Blood season finale.

HBO is totally worth the money

Chopping wood is apparently a better workout than one would think.


Thanks to Taryn for the beautiful artistry of the first two pictures! They greatly amused me.


Do you live by pros and cons lists like me? I don't know how else to make decisions.

A refugee rib

I had my follow up doctor appointment today and I got both good and bad news.

Good news: All of my insides look great! I'm probably not going to die after all.

It's not a gallbladder issue and that means I can eat whatever I want. I celebrated by taking Faith for donuts after the appointment.

SUGAR!!!

Bad news: The doctor and nurse practitioner both think it's a displaced rib, but can't rule out a cracked rib based on my pain level and limited range of comfortable motion in my right arm. Plus, the pain is constant, with spikes brought on by movements, so that's another check mark in the "rib injury" box.

The bad part of all of this is that the doctor can't do anything to help end the pain (but I did get a painkiller refill!). If the rib is displaced versus cracked, then it can be put back in place, but they can't do it until I've given birth because it would just pop back out. If it's cracked, then time is the only cure. I may get some relief when the baby drops, but that is probably 7-8 weeks away.

There is some concern about the pain when it comes to pushing during labor (I can't even imagine assuming that hunched over position right now), but I told them that I'll cross that bridge when I get there. An epidural won't numb my rib area, but maybe it will take the edge off the pain. I'm just hoping I don't actually break anything in labor this time (like I did with my tailbone with Faith).

I think at this point I'm officially the Anti-Baby Fever Fairy of the blog world. Once the little yet-named fetus makes her grand entrance, I'm sure I'll forget about all of this. That's a lie, but it's a comforting lie. See, parenting is magical:

My new favorite phrase is "displaced rib" because it makes me think of my rib as some displaced person (polite term for refugee). It's like one of my ribs is a Palestinian forced to live in a camp in Lebanon. No wonder my rib is so angry. It would probably throw rocks if it could.

As far as running and other activities like lifting, the doctor said to let my pain threshold be my guide. If it hurts too much, stop doing it, and if I feel like it's making me worse, stop doing it. I might have to force my husband to come grocery shopping with me for a few weeks because that is by far the most painful activity at this point. He is already doing all the toddler lifting when he's home, so that helps a lot.

I ran 4ish miles today and it wasn't painless, but it was bearable. The nurse suggested compression on my rib area and I tried it, but I mostly felt like I couldn't breathe so I ditched it halfway through. I'm also going to try to reduce my daily distance and see if that helps with the pain.

I'm 30 weeks pregnant today, so I thought it would be nice to include a picture that wasn't one I took in the bathroom mirror. I think my husband has lost his picture taking privileges.

This is all he was doing at first:

He's focused on the important things

Then when I realized that he was laughing too much, he snapped this one:

This is my "You're not zooming in my boobs again, are you?" face

I know you're wondering why I don't blog my hair styling tips, but I don't want to give away my patented "Sit out in the yard with wet hair and let the frizz go nuts" methods.

I'm actually really thankful to finally know what is wrong with me, even if the treatment plan involves a lot of waiting in pain. I'm also really, really glad I don't have to live on a gall badder friendly low-fat diet. No matter how bad things are, at least this way I can still have bacon and ice cream.


If you had to go low-fat, what would you miss the most: sweet or savory stuff? I would have said sweet, but once I actually did for a week, I realized it was actually savory.

Ain't Nobody Got Time for That

Today was almost like a weekend because my husband stayed home from work, but he is sick so it's not like he was home to party. Unless you call sleeping in late and having someone make you peanut butter toast a "party". Well, I would call that a party and send my RSVP in as soon as possible.

Since Faith doesn't understand complex directions like "Leave Daddy alone", I tried to keep her busy with going for a walk and then going for fun errands like the bank. I don't know what's wrong with our Navy Federal branch, but they didn't give out lollipops. That's the whole point of going to the bank as a child. Luckily, I always have fruit leathers in my purse, so I was able to keep her reasonably happy as we waited.

They wouldn't like me when I'm angry

I intended to run today, but I had a bad night pain-wise (even with painkillers) and then when I tried to run, it was just really painful so I downgraded it to a 2 mile walk instead. I haven't been doing a super job of taking it easy so far this week and it's probably biting me in the butt, or it could have just been the bad night. If I get instructions to rest more at the doctor's appointment tomorrow, I will scale back accordingly.

Mommy, your problem is probably that you don't stretch enough

Since I'm an amazing wife, I went out and got my husband soup for lunch. He has the same sore throat virus thing that I had, so I know how much that sucked. Plus, I got lunch for myself so it wasn't totally selfless. I split chicken lo mein with Faith and she went nuts eating it, saying "SO GOOD!" repeatedly, something she has never said about food before. I don't really blame her, it's amazing lo mein.

Food in take out containers is so much better than what Mommy makes

I let Faith spend most the afternoon outside playing in the sprinklers. Wearing her out is going to be hard when it gets too cold for water stuff outside. We haven't been able to use the backyard for over a week because the back door is still shattered (but taped up), but now our side lawn looks awesome from the near daily watering.

Faith's patented nursing style seems to have worked and I think my husband is well enough to go back to work tomorrow. I think he might actually find his desk at work to be more quiet and restful than being at home with a toddler.

Daddy, I'm not hugging you, I'm Tebow-ing

I now have a theme song for my rib (or gallbladder) issue. I'm embarrassed to admit how many times I've listened to this (it gets in my head!) or how many times I've said "ain't nobody got time for that!" since I first heard it.

Enjoy:





What's your go-to food when you are sick? My husband is all about PB toast for breakfast and soups for other meals, but I can't think of anything specific that I like, other than ramen if I feel queasy.

I Refuse

As runner who reads lots of running blogs, I have a lot of exposure to "race trends". I'd like to say that I'm a good sport, but that's a lie. Here's a list of things I refuse to do:

Obstacle races. Back when they first started to get popular, I did a Warrior Dash race and I remember thinking "This is going to be so cool! The website has lead me to believe this is a hardcore challenge!". Then on race day I lined up with a bunch of drunk non-runners and within 5 minutes I was standing in a line to crawl through cow shit and I realized I was a huge sucker.

I paid 65 bucks for the privilege of scraping my knees in a vat of cow shit

There are obstacle races that present an actual physical challenge (like the Tough Mudder) but those races seem to enjoy putting the runners in dangerous situations, like making them run through live wires and proudly displaying photos on their website of people being taken away in arm splints on stretchers. I love running way too much to risk getting some dumbass injury from a manufactured obstacle.


Color Runs. You may have not heard of these, but it's an untimed 5K and they throw colored dust on you. That's it. That's the whole gimmick and these things SELL OUT. I don't get it. You pretty much lost me at "untimed".

First of all, 5Ks aren't supposed to be fun. It's 3.1 miles of hard running. I don't pay money to pussy foot around and hold hands with strangers instead of running to the best of my ability on that particular day. I've run 5Ks pregnant and running those 3 miles when I'm not allowed to go all out was so boring, I can't imagine paying extra for that level of "fun".

Don't even get me started on how getting colored shit thrown on you is "fun". You know who thinks that kind of thing is fun? Toddlers. That's because they don't have to do their own laundry.


Relay races. Things like Ragnar are really popular right now and I feel like I've read about so many relay races that I basically have that sweaty runner van smell on me. If you're not familar with this type of race, here it is in a nutshell: You and 12 (or 6 if you're HARDCORE) of your friends, but more likely absolute strangers, pile in white vans and run 200ish miles by each taking turns, all day and night. When you're not running, you sit in the increasingly smelly, sweaty van and have forced small talk with the other runners and fight over the good parts of the Chex Mix.

Since you have to wait long periods of time between your runs (just enough time to get stiff and cranky!), you are allowed to sleep, but good luck with that. But don't worry! Eventually you all get to cross the finish line together and shed girlish tears over the majestic feat of running 200 miles in a fucking sparkle skirt.

Gurrrrl power!

Then if you're really obnoxious, you'll put a "200" sticker on your car. Newsflash: You didn't run 200 miles. You ran what, 23 miles over the course of 2+ days? You don't get to count the miles you rode in the van. Nice try though.

Also, I'm not running at 2am unless I'm running an ultra. There is no way in hell I'm going to run 7 miles at 2am, that's just stupid. Running 100 miles is logical compared to that, at least then I'm losing a whole night of sleep for a good reason.

Any Hot Chocolate or RAM racing event. Ever. I've learned my lesson.

Rock and Roll race series. I have nothing negative to say about how these races are organized (some of them have issues, but all large events do), but I refuse to do them. Why? I hate people.

Everything about these events is dealing with crowds, from packet pickup to the finish line. These races are fun for some people, but I'll stick to small races with race day packet pick up, even if that means I won't get good "swag" or see some washed up band play for me as I elbow my way through a sweaty crowd in a  post-race "beer garden".


Now that I've recorded all of these, someone can pull this up as a reference of my hypocrisy if I ever do these races in the future. I feel pretty safe though, unless the pain from my rib area makes me lose all reason and I start to think an untimed all night relay race sounds awesome.

In case anyone was wondering, my abdominal sonogram was fine this morning, but I won't know the results until Thursday morning. Until then, I have my new smug hipster shoes to give me comfort.

Giraffe shoes!

Yes, I know my dress is wrinkled. Bite me.


What's your opinion on any of the above races? If you just ran a relay race in a sparkle shirt, I apologize for any offense.