Pregnancy update - 32 weeks

I had another appointment with my birth center yesterday.  Everything is still going pretty well.  Baby's heart rate is good (140 bpm).  My blood pressure is staying nice and low, which I am super happy about.  I gained 3 pounds this month, which is a nice healthy amount.  This makes my total weight gain for the pregnancy 5 pounds (since I lost so much weight in my first trimester due to morning sickness).  When I was pregnant with Mira, this was the time of the pregnancy that I was putting on the most weight, so I'm feeling really good about my modest but healthy weight gain, especially right now.  I'm eating a little healthier in this pregnancy than my previous one (substituting healthy, low fat, low sugar foods instead of giving in to every craving) and I'm also much more physically active in this pregnancy than I was in my last pregnancy (entirely due to the fact that I have to keep up with a toddler all day long instead of sit at a desk job).  So those two things combined probably account for the more modest weight gain.

I am still having ocular migraines, but they are coming on much less frequently.  I do seem to notice a correlation between them and getting stressed out.  It seems like if I'm having "one of those days", then I am more likely to get an ocular migraine.  Which is always a great addition to whatever I'm already dealing with, let me tell you.  :-/  I have had one while I was driving, which is probably the worst possible time since I go almost completely blind.  Luckily I was in a place where it was easy to pull over, so everything was fine.  But as a result of that, we are having Brian do the driving for me when it is at all an option.  I did talk to a midwife at the birth center about them, and she said it was likely due to the hormonal changes in my body but that I should get in to see an eye doctor just to make sure it isn't something else.

Now that I'm firmly into the third trimester, I am really starting to feel tired again.  Looking back on the second trimester, I realize that I did have more energy, but it certainly didn't feel like it at the time.  But by comparison, it was better because now I am plain exhausted.  But I can't just go to sleep, oh no.  I'm so uncomfortable at night, I'm tossing and turning and getting up every so often to pee.  So there's really no relief of the constant lack of energy.  And I wish that I could just let things go, sit and relax and not fret about whatever needs to be done, and I do sometimes, but other times all the things I need to do start rummaging around in my head and then I start getting anxious if I don't clean something or put something away or take Mira somewhere or run an errand.  ("Stay at home mom" is really a misnomer.)

So when I talked to the midwife about all that, the ocular migraines associated with stress and having trouble sleeping yet feeling tired all the time, she said "Well it sounds like you're having trouble relaxing.  You could try having a half glass of wine before bed every now and then."  Oh really????  Well, I took her advice last night, but I don't think I drank enough to feel any different, it was just a few sips really, not even a half glass.  And I drank it slowly, over the course of 2 hours, so I really didn't feel anything.  But it was nice to just taste.  I don't think I'm comfortable drinking more than a few sips at a time (I'm a little paranoid, despite recent evidence to the contrary), so I'm not sure I'll get the effects the midwife intended from this, but I have always liked the taste of wine, so I might try this again before the pregnancy is through.

Ellowyn continues to be quite the little athlete, despite the rapid decrease in available space.  She often moves so vigorously that I am suddenly very uncomfortable, sometimes even causing me sharp pains in the ribs or pelvic bone.  Despite the discomfort, it is kind of fun to sit and watch my belly twist and jump this way and that.  I'm trying to enjoy it as much as possible, since we're not entirely sure that we'll want a third child, so it's possible that this will be my last pregnancy.