Heartburn VS Laziness

I discovered a while back that the biggest contributor to my heartburn was drinking green tea throughout the day. I find that if I don't have any (and even while eating other, typically problematic foods), that I will have little to no heartburn. Which, delightfully, has most recently taken the form of acid/puke burps. Ewww.

However, now I'm also discovering that without my green tea (and as the baby gets bigger, heavier, and more and more greedy with our mutual oxygen supply), I am fighting the urge to do NOTHING ALL DAY. I am tired and feel like most activities are pointless. Siiiigh.

I DO have ADD and have always been quite successful with my low dose of adderall. However, I haven't been taking it since I got pregnant. Tea was a nice stand-in; a little caffeine to get me moving and focused. But without either of these things I find myself lazy and listless. Sigh.

The last few days, I've just been dealing with the heartburn. Our house can't go neglected for more than one day without serious consequences.

Heartburn Solutions

So since I last updated, I went through probably about a week where I seemed to have heartburn constantly, and I was pretty miserable. Along the same lines, I had one of those "MY BELLY IS STRETCHED BEYOND BELIEF, I AM HORRIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE, HOW CAN THIS BABY GET ANY BIGGER?" few days right at the same time. As usual, I thought that I would feel this way for the rest of the pregnancy and I started to get pretty down about it.

However, in the last few days or so, I've discovered that it really is true that what you eat matters in the heartburn department. The main thing I realized is that I can't drink any tea any more--at least not green, white, or black tea (maybe purely fruit or herbal tea might be okay, I'm not sure). I had gotten back into the habit of drinking green/white tea throughout most of the day, and I think, in retrospect, that this was the main cause of my constant heartburn.

Other bad foods: grapefruit, oranges, orange juice, lemonade (any citrus I guess) . . . I was on a real grapefruit kick for awhile there and they were so delicious and amazing that I think I was in denial that they might be contributing to my heartburn issues.

But low and behold, simply giving up tea and citrus seem to single-handedly have cured my heartburn, and I'm incredibly grateful. And, as it tends to do, my belly and body seem to have made it through another adjustment and I once again feel comfortable and happy with being pregnant.

The only thing about cutting out these foods is that my list of foods I CAN eat is once again shrinking. I have been more and more flexible about eating gluten occasionally because bread is the thing that really sounds good in the midst of this heartburn control diet. I have minimal side effects from eating bread--the times I really notice the effect of the gluten is when I eat something made with a higher processed form of gluten (like fake meat/veggie burgers, etc).

Anyway, it's now been probably 5 days since I needed to have a Tums, so I'm pretty relieved to have managed this issue--at least for now.

Tonight is our first childbirth class (Bradley Method). I will try to remember to update about it tomorrow. I'm very excited!

The Third Trimester

So I officially hit the third trimester about a week ago.

Since then,

- I have been cleaning obsessively--which is exactly what my house needed. Right now our new library (with guest bed) and books, is almost set up. The bed and dresser are all set up and all the shelves are in place and the books are at least half on the shelves. That room looks awesome and it will be easy to finish.
Our guest room now holds my sewing desk and sewing machine (and associated mess). I need to go through the desk better and organize everything, but it is a good spot for it. Also in there is a dresser holding our sheets and quilts, and a shelf with all the games in the house. The bed in there needs to be fixed/replaced since it is deflating, but the room itself looks good.
The downstairs has been rearranged so that James' desk is in the living room. We are going to try to set up the bills and mail down here, or we can sit at it when we are on the computer.
The wooden room (to be dining room) downstairs is sort of in the middle of being cleaned up, like that is where I left off. I have an idea of how to arrange things down there--mostly just clearing out to fit our new dining room table and chairs (which James' amazing Aunt got for $57 at auction for us, woohoo). But I also want to arrange the desk in there to hold jars and some big cooking things.
So I have made a ton of progress on the house, which is awesome.

- Also since a week ago when I hit the third trimester, I have had some level of heartburn after most meals (especially while laying down). This can be worsened simply by pressing on my stomach. :-/ But actually it's not really that bad--just very slight. I'm hoping it doesn't get worse but I think I might be fighting physics in there.

- And last but not least, I noticed yesterday (in the midst of my week of insane cleaning and moving things around), that my feet were swollen. I was pretty surprised. But I had been doing a lot (probably barefoot the entire time), and my feet might also have been sore (and swollen) from that anyway.

But it's definitely been a classic third trimester week, hasn't it? In some ways I can't believe that we only have 12 weeks left--less than 3 months to go . . . in other ways I feel like 3 months is still a long time to have this baby grow and get so much bigger . . .

He is supposedly about 2-2.5 lbs right now. He'll probably be at least 6-8 pounds, so he is going to triple or quadruple in size over the next three months, how the heck will he fit in there? -- Yet my stomach just seems to keep getting bigger, and I guess that's how.

Bye Bye OJ

So, here at week 25 (and admittedly, even last week--week 24) I'm starting to feel a bit (as a friend of mine put it) third trimestery . . . the peeing has gotten pretty ridiculous, and even more annoyingly, I am starting to get hints of heartburn--most notably, after drinking orange juice. Luckily its not that bad, but it certainly doesn't make me want to drink a whole lot of OJ!

So, I guess me and OJ are all done until November. :-(