25 week gripe

My blog post titles are getting so boring!

So, week 25 kicked my big, pregnant arse. I've started having pain in my mid back that, when unheeded, sends a constellation of referred pains out through my ribs and renders me speechless and triggers BH contractions. Not so much fun. It's happening more now, and daily, so it's forcing me to really reduce my time doing things like... sitting. I pretty much lost the entire week - work got put on hold, and almost all of my time not spent driving to appointments (or the beach, oops) has been spent sleeping or lying down.

I'm therefore about to turn over a new leaf, starting this weekend when I get to lounge around at K's house, or rather, in her big, glorious bathtub. I don't really plan on doing anything else besides eat, get a bunch of work done, and soak in the tub. On Tuesday, come hell or high water, I will make it to the prenatal class at the local pool. So, that's 4 out of 5 days coming that will each involve some level of weightlessness - let's hope it puts an end to this awful spasm.

Again on the physical level, I'm also now starting to enjoy some lax ligaments, which has resulted in near nightly slight dislocations of my right collarbone, since that's the side I sleep on. I can pop it back myself, but it's getting pretty sore.... like I needed another sleep discomfort!

What else happened this week? Well, I posted about out outings last Saturday, and Laurie covered our trip to the beach... in between those things, I've been sleeping. Today, I had a whole day of chores: I picked up my twin nursing pillow this morning, then had appointments with the midwives and my lovely chiropractor, where I also got to pick up my new temperpedic neck pillow.

The meeting with the midwives was cool. I didn't expect the three of them to all be there, but it was nice to meet them all again. Interestingly, this was the first time in all these weeks that a health care practitioner has actually put their hands on my belly to feel the babies - it was very satisfying and certainly makes it all feel much more... palpable that there are real babies growing in there. It grounded me in my belly, somehow. We got to listen to their perfect hearts beating and chat about how in the weeks to come their positions will become much more obvious as the space in there is diminished. My blood pressure is really, really good (low for me, yay!) at 110/72, and according to their scale, I actually lost a pound (boo!). They weren't concerned about that, since we're looking for a trend instead of specific numbers, but damn.... it seemed like another manifestation of this all-consuming exhaustion. All told, I've gained 28 pounds, so I'm projecting that my total weight gain for the pregnancy will be 40-50 pounds - hopefully on the high end. It's very strange to be aiming for that higher number!

Sorry there's no 25w photo today... we'll try to get one tomorrow. I am really just way too tired.

So to sum up: babies are great, mama is tired and sore, but healthy.

Two more weeks and I'll be in my third trimester! Now how do you like them apples?