Insulation Station

The insulation….has arrived….

This is one of the biggest events of my pregnancy  After waiting for four months, we finally received the stupid $40 worth of insulation to finish putting up the wall in our nursery. To be done before the weekend: put up drywall, tape drywall, sand down all putty on drywall. To be done on Sunday, barring negative temperatures outside: paint entire room.

Then all we shall have left is the chair rail and the base board painting/installation. It’s really ridiculously exciting!!

In other baby news, the little munchkin has started kicking a lot harder. Or my ab muscles are slowly deteriorating. Before it was just flutters – it feels like a twitching muscle to me. Now its actual jabs. Not hard enough to be painful or uncomfortable, but enough to make me actually notice. As the baby books say, this often happens for several minutes at a time – apparently our child is throwing himself dance parties in the womb. He particularly loved the music on the cruise that we heard in the theatre or out on deck. (I can’t remember if I posted that before or not).

Something I’ve been working hard on the past few months is my calcium intake. It’s more complicated than you would think to get your daily amount…in a household that is mostly dairy-free. I’ve had to adopt some regular intervals throughout the day to have some sort of dairy product. Thus far, I’ve been having: one cup of no-sugar-added hot chocolate, with water = 30% of my daily calcium. One prenatal vitamin = 15% of my daily need. On helping of yogurt (6 oz.) = 20% of daily need. Variable additions may include up to three cheese sticks, each 20% of the daily needed; one glass of soy milk with ovaltine, 40% of my need (b/c of the soy milk instead of regular); one glass of calcium-enriched OJ, 20% of my daily value. Some of our pastas contain calcium, and I sometimes get a brick of extra sharp cheddar cheese and have a few pieces. Tim’s solution to the calcium was to eat a bowl full of bland bran cereal every day. A) I hate bran cereal, it’s gross. And b) I like to either have hot breakfasts or my staple of yogurt and granola. On the weekends we usually eat Special K with Kashi, but no bran for me. Yuck.

I’ve also noticed that I’m just starting to feel like I’m carrying extra weight around. I think at this point I must be close to 20 pounds heavier than before I was pregnant (no chubby face yet, thank goodness). I don’t have any swelling anywhere yet, and other than my tummy getting in the way sometimes when I’m doing the dishes or reaching for something up high, I haven’t noticed it too much. But a couple of times today, walking up the stairs or moving quickly, I’ve consciously felt the extra weight in front of me. It’s not hurting my back or making me feel like I’m going ot fall at all, but before today, I honestly can’t say that I ever felt like I had any extra weight at all, except for maybe when I was rolling over while sleeping.