1/1: The best laid plans

Where: Home
When: May 4, 2011

So, I had all these plans. One of those plans was to get myself in excellent physical condition, partly because I enjoy that kind of thing, but mostly because we've decided being alive is too awesome to not share, so we were going to try to have a baby, and I wanted to prepare myself beforehand in order to be able to maintain some semblance of that fitness throughout the pregnancy, hopefully making pregnancy and the labor easier on both me and the baby.

Mission accomplished. Sort of.

I am now with (a very wiggly and energetic) child, according to our brief view via ultrasound a week ago. This is obviously delightful. And I was definitely pretty fit into the first 5 or 6 weeks of this.

I'm now 13 weeks, and the past 6 weeks or so have featured a long, slow decline in the integrity of the ligaments that hold my pelvis together. This is a predictable side effect of pregnancy, it's necessary that everything spread out so that the baby can actually be born. But today it took me 10 minutes to walk two short blocks. While 6 weeks ago, my joints were just aching and uncomfortable, and I had to sit down occasionally while walking places, things have progressed to the point that I am now getting a stabbing pain in my sacroiliac joints that leaves me gasping and unable to move for several seconds. The only way to avoid it is to walk very, very slowly with a shuffling gait and no sudden movements. And even then I still get unexpected jolts of pain at delightfully unexpected moments. (This makes walking the dog awesome, by the way.)

So, plans for an active pregnancy filled with hiking and spending time in the weight room have been shelved. Plans for working until at least my third trimester have been shelved (my work is massage therapy, which requires both standing for long periods and lots of leaning over, neither of which are currently tolerated by my joints).

New plans - find things to do so I don't go crazy. Currently in the works - learn how to cook, and start a new photography project.

I am very, very wary of calling the photography project a 365 day, or even a 30 day - who knows how long I'll keep this one up for. So for now, I'm aiming to take and post a photo a day, and I'll up the count as I go, rather than trying to predict the desires and energy levels of my future self.

The cooking will be interesting - I'm scared of the kitchen, it stresses me out, but since I have lots of time with nothing to do but grow a baby, I may as well learn how to feed the two of us properly. Tonight's attempt:

Pan-Seared Salmon, with (frozen dough from Whole Foods) a warm french baguette, and Sugar Snap Peas with Pine Nuts and Garlic. Recipes all courtesy of America's Test Kitchen, who produce the only recipes I feel relatively confident that I can't mess up.