exhaustion

Day one of my thirty-fourth week of pregnancy and I'm only feeling one thing: exhaustion. And I thought I was tired a month ago.

The pregnancy's taking a lot out of me at this point. I got out of bed this morning after about nine and a half hours (granted, I wake up every hour or so and get up at least once every two hours, so it's not uninterrupted sleep), ate breakfast (white grapefruit, a glass of orange juice, a glass of skim milk and two pieces of toast), threw in a load of laundry, and showered. Also in there was letting the dog in and out a couple of times. When I got out of the shower I was so tired I thought I might fall over if I stood in the bathroom doing my hair and makeup. I had to take about a twenty-minute break before even attempting to do so. Then cleaning the snow off the car and driving thirty miles an hour to my doctor's appointment and back took two hours and fifteen minutes. Guess how I felt when I got home? Exhausted. I had just settled myself in the recliner my dad loaned me (quite a process, since it's not the easiest thing to get into and out of for someone carrying thirty-six extra pounds in and around her belly) and turned on my computer to do a freelance editing job when--scratch, scratch--my puppy was scratching at the back door to be let out. I didn't even bother sitting back down again until she was back in. I worked on the editing job for an hour and a half (the original plan was three hours, but between the snow and my dog that didn't work) and had to get up again, this time to go to physical therapy. I just got back, and guess how I feel? Exhausted. (Sense a theme here?) Before I was pregnant those prenatal vitamins gave me energy bursts; now I know they must be working, because I'm getting none of the energy. I think it's all leaking out into baby, who is quiet at the moment but, overall, moves a lot more frequently than he/she did in previous months.

I'm looking for a clever transition here, but prego brain can't come up with one, so I'll just move on abruptly. The doctor I saw this morning was the doc I've been seeing for my hips and carpal tunnel, not my ob-gyn. (In case you're catching up, I've talked about my hips and carpal tunnel before here, and also in my old blog several times.) And she's one doctor I can knock off the list for now. Ten days ago, the steroid shots she gave me for my carpal tunnel started kicking in. My right hand barely bothers me, and my left is good for about half a day before it starts getting annoyingly sore and tingly. She said that we're good on that unless I get another painful flareup, at least until April, after the baby's born. Since I do have some muscle damage, she wants to see me again post-delivery to make sure we don't have to do anything else (surgery, etc.). And since physical therapy is taking care of my hips, we're good on that, too. My physical therapist has cut down my sessions to two per week (from three) because he can tell that I am getting exhausted by all of the exercise, so I've got fewer appointments on that front, too. (By the way, my physical therapist thinks I'll have a boy based on the foods that I crave. He's five for five so far. We'll see.)

The final thing I have to write about today? My husband called me around noon telling me I better take echinacea because he thinks he's getting sick. He knows that my former primary physician, an M.D. as well an anthroposophical doctor always had me take three times the daily intake of vitamin C and twice the daily intake of echinacea when I thought I was coming down with a cold, sore throat, or other ailment of that nature. I told him that I wasn't sure I could take it; there are all sorts of herbs and herbal remedies that pregnant women should stay away from. So I looked it up, and it turns out that experts just don't know, and thus disagree, about using echinacea. If they don't know, I'd rather stay away from it just in case. Even vitamin C can be tricky; Your Pregnancy Week by Week* states, "Don't take more than the recommended dose...; too much may cause stomach cramps and diarrhea. It can also negatively affect your baby's metabolism" (149). Of course, you can look up other sites that will tell you differently, so I tend to just go with what I crave on this one (thus the white grapefruit and oj this morning) as well as taking my prenatal. So what do I do about my husband's potential illness? Nothing--and hope he just has an allergy/sinus flareup like about three other people I've talked to today.

Signing off with a hope that I won't be so exhausted that I fall asleep trying to edit...

*Curtis, G.B. and J.S. Schuler. 2008. Your Pregnancy Week by Week, 6th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Press.