Last week I was trying to do to much. Now I'm supposed to be doing nothing at all.
You think you know what you're doing. You think you're listening to your body and resting when you're tired, but otherwise being quite pleased with how much you're still managing to get done and how surprisingly upcrap you are at yoga... and then oops, you move a small box and everything goes off the rails.
Pregnancy causes the production of relaxin to relax the ligaments, especially around your pelvis so that baby can come out. This I knew. But I also thought I was fit and healthy and was acting a bit smug about looking moderately normal aside from the beachball sized bump sticking out of my front - no joke, one of the teachers at my school professed to be mystified about my absence this week as he was unaware I was pregnant - 35 weeks pregnant. I probably wasn't slowing down as much as I ought to have been, but at the same time, it wasn't like I was doing anything actually silly - I made husband move all the furniture around and doing the cooking is hardly high impact activity. But, that damn box. I only tried to shift it a couple of inches with my foot, but ooff, the consequences weren't quite what I was expecting.
I now know a lot more about the anatomy of my pelvis than I did previously. In shifting the box I put rather too much strain across my newly relaxed symphysis pubis joint - the one on the middle and it moved. This is bloody painful. Having a strong and stable pelvis is apparently somewhat critical for being able to do things like WALK. Fortunately lying down allows the joint to realign. However, activities like chasing toddlers when then run off down the street or carrying them up the stairs when they're refusing to have their nappy changed makes it rather worse again.
I've also learnt about the delightful names my condition gets referred to as. I don't know if it's just reproductive health in general or that I haven't been exposed to so many names for conditions that have to do with your elbow joint or something. But, the elbow joint - a common injury is 'tennis elbow', I on the other hand have 'pelvic girdle pain' or 'symphysic joint disfunction', both sound awful and the latter sounds like by body has the audacity to misbehave. Ugh.
The upshot of all this girdle disfunction is that I've been signed off work for the week and assigned a place on my sofa. It'a a bit strange not doing things, especially when there are so many things that need doing! I have had to make myself be well behaved, which has been increasingly hard as I've started to feel a bit stronger again. Being strong is predicated on time spent sitting down and I have to keep myself remembering this. Luckily there's been some good TV to catch up on and I've at least managed to knit most of a cardigan for the new wee one. It would be somewhat unfair to have nothing new made for the this baby as both the other two had a mother who went on maternity leave a little earlier and went on somewhat of a sewing and crafting binge.
Oh - and today is a snow day. Sally's school is still open fortunately, I'll just have to wait to hear if they still went off to play outside for forest school which is their usual last slot on a Friday afternoon. I reckon unless it's actually snowing then they'll still go, that school has made me walk up mountains and along Hadrian's wall in the driving wind and rain - and a year ago on a taster morning they sent us all up to the copse to freeze in the snow and that was before we'd even given them any school fees. On that particular occasion Ed was rather pleased to have been nominated 'fire monitor'. A little bit of snow will surely make sitting around a fire pit and running around in the bushes just a bit more fun. Pip of course loved going out to play in the snow this morning...
He couldn't be persuaded to put his proper coat on (this is his 'my digging coat') or a hat and gloves and every time I tried to roll snow to make a snowman he stamped on it so we really weren't out for very long, but it did make him a very happy wee chappie while we were out there.