Up till now, aside from general stomach ickiness and an expanding waistline, pregnancy hasn’t changed my lifestyle much. Sure, sometimes I go to bed around 8:30pm. However, I suspect pregnancy may be a convenient scapegoat rather than the real cause of this phenomenon.

On Christmas Eve, I stumbled over an ethernet cable and managed to break a small piece of my big toe. This effectively put a stop to my normal exercise routine. Last Monday, I cautiously started doing my morning step aerobics. Step aerobics are much easier than walking as it doesn’t require bending one’s toe if you’re careful. I felt a little more out of breath than normal but put it down to not exercising at all for almost a week and a half.

Tuesday I got up and exercised again. Tuesday afternoon I got what felt like a Braxton Hicks contraction except it stayed tight for most of the afternoon. I drank plenty of water and squirmed around in my office chair but it didn’t go away. I was trying to figure out whether or not this was a problem. It didn’t hurt at all so I decided this was probably just some weird variation that I hadn’t run into before. On the way home, I called mom to talk to her and casually mentioned the weird tightness. She told me to call my doctor so I did. My doctor said I should go home and lay down and do nothing for the rest of the evening and give her a call in the morning if it still hadn’t gone away. I called Jaeger and told him he was responsible for dinner and then got home and laid down on the couch. He fixed a very nice meal.

The next morning I felt normal again but decided I should skip exercising. I haven’t had a reoccurrance of the multi-hour tightening but in the afternoons, after a simple endeavor such as climbing the stairs, I can immediately feel it tightening up again. I find a smidgen alarming since Calvin won’t be full term till early March.

Cleaning the house last week took almost twice as long as normal because I kept sitting down waiting for the tightening to stop. I’m seriously thinking about paying a house cleaner to come and clean house for the next several months. I still feel in great shape so it’s a little exasperating that this one little thing is keeping me from my normal activities. However, Calvin will be here soon enough. I certainly want to avoid anything that would put me on bed rest. I’d go insane. I just have to keep reminding myself to pay attention to what I’m doing instead of blindly charging ahead