At 23 Weeks...

Weeks 18 - 21 were by far the best pregnancy weeks so far. I could feel the baby moving by week 18, was finally looking more pregnant and was getting nearly a full night's sleep for the first time in four months.  That continued for a few weeks until sometime last week when the mid to low back pain that had been slowly making itself a presence became a nearly full time nuisance, especially at night while trying to sleep.  I've been experimenting with pillows and wedges and whatnot but have not found a comfortable way to stay sleeping (or at least resting in bed) in between getting up to go to the bathroom at night.

Other irritations that have come on strong in the last week or so are heartburn, sinus congestion and headaches.  I have adjusted my diet to remove anything remotely sweet or spicy.  That is probably my greatest disappointment with this pregnancy - the inability to consume anything with spice.  I LOVE spicy food and I especially miss all the Indian food I used to make but sadly I cannot even use pepper these days without enduring heartburn. This of course doesn't stop me from craving all sorts of wonderful things my body cannot tolerate right now.  It's really unfair how that happens.

My sinus congestion is really annoying and causes me to breathe through my mouth a lot, especially at night.  The headaches are probably partly related to the sinus problem and partly due to hormones, either way I was out of commission most of this weekend with near-migraine quality headaches.  So not fun.

I'm going to look into getting a prenatal massage sometime in the next week or so and hopefully that will help everything a bit.  I've been meaning to book one for a while now but never seem to get around to it because I can't really imagine how comfortable it will be.  I guess I'll eventually find out.

This week I have my first OB appointment, a dentist appointment (now that I can finally sort-of tolerate the taste of mint again) and a long overdue hair appointment to get at least 4 inches trimmed off.  

Work has become crazy busy in the past month as the busy season has begun.  My back-up while I'm off on mat leave is about 5% trained - total fail so far.  It is really hard to find the time to write up standard operating procedures from scratch while dealing with a million other things each day (in between a zillion bathroom breaks of course).  I'm starting to stress a little on this because almost none of my job tasks can be picked up after doing them just once or twice.  My original goal was to have him fully trained by the end of November in case something happened with my pregnancy (bed rest, etc.) but I think we'll be pushing that now. 

Well, my attention is being drawn to the busy mover in my uterus so I'm going to go find Jules so she can feel her daughter performing her nightly gymnastics routine. :)