Operation Pink Herring

23 weeks

Well, here I am. I survived the weekend. Looking back, I am really not sure what I was so panicked about, but you know how that is. Or maybe you don't because you're not an anxiety-prone person who works themselves into a lather at the thought of not having a full weekend day to zone out on the couch. Lucky you.

Things went pretty well overall, if anyone cares. I survived the entire 18 hours of yoga training and my teaching portion went really well. No prize dropped from the ceiling as a reward when I walked out the door on Sunday at 4pm, but I'm sure that was just an oversight and a big box of chocolate covered something is on its way. The flea market was a pretty good success, despite the fucking RAIN that would not stop raining down from the rain-filled sky the entire day. And my friend and her boyfriend ended up not coming to town and staying with us. Which was probably best. For their own safety. I spent a good hour and a half cleaning up and putting shit away last night after work and the place STILL looks like a post-yard sale disaster. I had to leave the back door open all last night just to vent out the nasty smell that has somehow invaded the house. Henry the Cat chose to lounge on the deck next to the compost bin rather than in the house, if that tells you anything. I'm going to stop talking about this now.

****************

Now that it's glaringly obvious that I am quite pregnant, a lot of my fellow teacher trainees have been politely asking if I knew I was pregnant when I enrolled in this training. The answer is kind of complicated. When I registered and paid my non-refundable deposit in November, I was not pregnant. Shortly afterwards I got my PCOS diagnosis and we started to very seriously think about trying to get pregnant sooner rather than later. I obviously realized that with the training running from February-September, there was a possibility that I would (hopefully) have to complete some portion of it while pregnant. I looked at it as betting on both sides: if we were able to get pregnant, hooray!  And if we couldn't get pregnant, well... at least I'd be able to complete the training! Which, by the way, I'd been meaning to do for years, but there was always something in the way. I was working full time and going to grad school and didn't have time. I was travelling too much for work. I was planning a wedding. I just felt like if I put it off another year it was just never going to happen. So we plowed ahead on both tracks.

And then by the beginning of January, we realized that hooray and holy shit, I was pregnant. For real. With a baby. I emailed the studio owner who runs the training to see if I was even able to still do the training, which is pretty intense, while pregnant. She said it was totally up to me. I wouldn't be the first person to do go through some of the training pregnant (although I've since found out that I will be something like the third, and that I will be the first to do the ENTIRE thing pregnant), but they would refund my deposit if I wanted to drop out at that point. The thing was, I needed to decide right away so they could fill my space before the training started in February. If I started and then couldn't make it through, I'd be getting zero refund. This thing is pretty expensive. She did graciously offer that if I had to drop out, I could make up what I missed in a future year's training at no charge... but we really, REALLY hope to not live in Baltimore at that point. So I'm not considering that as an option.

Obviously, I decided to go ahead with it. At that time, way back in January, the pregnancy seemed so tenuous and incredible that it felt like I'd be tempting fate to make any sort of life alterations around it. And now here I am, halfway done with the pregnancy and halfway done with the training. So far, so good!  The training ends on September 11th. I am due on September 13th. The closer we get, the more ridiculous it seems that I thought cutting it so close was a feasable option.  But really, I didn't have much of a choice.Hopefully the baby stays in until its due date. Hey, my mom had all three of her children on her exact due date!  It could happen. And we're allowed to miss one day of the training, which I am obviously saving for that last day in case the baby is two days early. Maybe I'll be the first person to go into labor during this thing. At least I'll be surrounded by a pretty competent bunch, which includes two nurses and a gaggle of doulas and midwives. I'm trying not to worry about it, and to just take it one week at a time. Right now I can still do both. If I reach a point where I can't any more, I'll figure something out.

*********************

You may have noticed that I'm still calling it "the baby". Not "him" or "her". That's because we're not finding out the sex. As an impatient person who doesn't really like surprises, trust me, I know. But Joel really, really wants it to be a surprise on the day of the birth and he's a pretty good guy so he gets his way on this. I'm actually very OK with it. What's another 20 weeks of not knowing in the grand scheme of life?  Sorry to disappoint those of you who've asked, though. You'll know when we know!

 

I have absolutely no feeling one way or the other. I had one dream that the doctor accidentally let it slip that it was a girl. So maybe it's a girl. Then again, I have about five girl names that I really like and no boy names that I'm absolutely in love with, so it's probably a boy. Place your bets!

Maybe if I write it all down it won't seem so overwhelming

I am not sure how everything that needs to get done in the next four days is going to happen.

I started a yoga teacher training in February, did I tell you guys that? I meant to tell you about it in NOVEMBER, when I signed up, but then I got distracted. And then I got pregnant. And as you may have noticed, that sort of took over my life and my blog. The teacher training has been great so far, but it is extremely time consuming. One weekend a month, from February to September, we have training all weekend. And I mean ALL WEEKEND. 7:30-10:30pm on Fridays, 12:30-8:30pm on Saturdays, and 9am-4pm on Sundays. It's fantastic, but it's exhausting. Rest assured, we're not actually doing yoga that entire time (I'd drop dead) (although we nearly did yoga the entire time the first weekend, and I nearly did drop dead), but it's still 18 hours of paying attention and taking notes and, now, practice teaching.

On top of that, we also need to go to 90-minute yoga classes three times a week. I thought this would be the hardest thing, but I actually love this. It does cut into my TV time, but I've come to love knowing that Tuesday and Thursday nights I have to go to yoga. There is no hemming and hawing over how I really should go to the gym, but I don't feel like it, but I REALLY should, but I REALLY REALLY just want to go home after work. No more worrying about it. I just have to go. And unsurprisingly, I feel pretty great from doing that much yoga. But still... it's more hours cut out of the week. And on weekends when we have the training, I have to squeeze in all three classes during the work week and that is kind of tough. While also trying to cram in the required reading that I always procrastinate doing.

Anyway, we have a training weekend coming up tomorrow. It's my group's turn to teach an hour-long yoga class and I am really nervous. And on top of that, we all have to have ANOTHER individual 30-minute class prepared, and I am also nervous about that.

And on top of THAT, we are participating in the neighborhood flea market on Saturday. When I haven't been at yoga this week, I've been helping Joel go through the entire house from closet to basement, deciding what to sell and what to keep. Hint: everything is a sell. Apparently a baby is going to live here in four months (FOUR MONTHS) and currently the only space we have to put said baby's crib (which we don't actually own, because the thought of researching and buying baby gear at the moment is enough to make me faint from exhaustion) is next to Henry's litterbox in the room we affectionately call the Poop Room. Because, you know, it's where the cat poops. And unfortunately, that's also what it smells like.

So I have to go to yoga tonight. I'll get home around 7:30. Then we'll start (and finish) pricing stuff for the flea market and cleaning off all the stuff that was stored in the spiderwebby basement. Then I'll HOPEFULLY go immediately to sleep, since I haven't slept the past two nights. Then on Friday, I'll finish out what has been an insane week at work, go immediately to to the yoga studio to practice one last time with my group, and stay there for training until 10:30pm. On Saturday we'll wake up around 6am, set up for the flea market, and then I'll race back to yoga training at noon, teach our class (OMG), and stay there until 8:30pm.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that my friend and her boyfriend are staying with us on Saturday night? So at some point, our disaster zone of a house is going to have to get cleaned. I'm putting Henry in charge of that.

All this to say, I cannot wait for it to be 4pm on Sunday. I can't even decide what I want to do starting at 4:01. Go directly to sleep? Surgically attach myself to the couch and watch 12 straight hours of TV? Compulsively pull every single weed out of the garden?

Sometimes when I'm feeling really overwhelmed it helps me to just list out everything I need to do, and then I realize it's not really that much. It didn't so much work this time so I'm just going with my backup strategy, which is to count down the hours until everything is over and then go into autopilot mode. First, survive the work day. Then survive Prenatal Yoga. Eat something, do the flea market stuff, sleep (please, god, let me fall asleep tonight). Repeat with variations on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday all I have to do is survive the training, no teaching anything. And then at 4pm I can go home and return to my life.

Seventy-eight hours to go.