Yesterday I posted this fun little graphic on my personal Facebook page.
It's funny but for the past 20 weeks, I feel like time has somewhat dragged on by. Now that I've reached the halfway point, the end seems very near and it's all starting to feel a bit real. A lot of it could be because I feel the baby moving around frequently. The last week or so, I feel the baby moving pretty much all the time while I'm at rest and awake to notice, including right now as I type. I hear that's normal - when I'm moving around, the natural rocking I'm causing can lull baby to sleep. When I'm at rest though, baby may want to create its own motion and because it's still rather small, there's a lot of room inside me for it to do its acrobatics. I'll find out today for certain how big it is, but it should measure about 6" from head to bum, or 10" if you include the legs :) Awww!
The moment I realized I hit the halfway point, I couldn't help but make the analogy to running. I remember in my marathoning days, that people told me the stress of a marathon is like labour, and I heard many other marathon/pregnancy analogies. The thing is though that in any race, any training run even, the moment I reach the halfway point, I manage to relax mentally and tackle the second half with confidence. The moment after the halfway point means that I'm more than halfway there. It means that whatever I have endured already is all I have to do moving forward. The second half may be harder to complete, but the successful first half is proof that I have the ability to endure. At a marathon, I celebrate at the half marathon mark - I mean one should celebrate reaching 21.1km anyway, so why not pat yourself on the back at that point in a race. But I do this at the 10.55km mark of half too, or in a 10K, 5K, or any training run too. It's my way of slicing the distance in half mentally. I just have to deal with half of the distance, and the rest after that is the home stretch.
So yesterday, in the spirit of reaching the halfway point in my pregnancy, I ran an out-and-back training run of 6km along the seawall in Vancouver. I started in Yaletown and turned around when I reached 3km on my watch, at 2nd Beach in Stanley Park. I made a point of stopping to celebrate that I'd reached my halfway point of this training run and took a few photos to mark the occasion. My pregnancy support belt has a pocket in the back just big enough for my phone :) The location and the weather couldn't have been more perfectly beautiful to take in!
Another cool thing happened the other day while I was working a shift at the Running Room. A woman came in to look at shoes and told me she's 20 weeks pregnant. I was wearing a very baggy shirt so I pointed out that I was too! Our due dates are a few days apart, but it was so lovely to have another pregnant runner to share experiences with. She too has been running consistently like I have been, and she too had been experiencing the dull achy abdominal discomfort post running. I felt like a hero by telling her about my research into this and how I discovered the pregnancy support belt. Since buying the belt, every run I have done wearing the belt has meant zero discomfort after. I recommended she consider it for herself and she was thankful. We both agreed that it seems like running this far into pregnancy has us a bit of a minority. We're both the same age and in our first pregnancy too and talked about how being active is the best thing we could be doing for our unborn children. I didn't take her name or info, but I will be thinking of her in the coming 20 weeks!
So that's all for now. Gotta get myself ready for the ultrasound :)
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