In a Glass Case of Emotion

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It's finally here. After a year of talking and planning and raising money and stressing, the time has finally come.

Jordan leaves for Kenya tomorrow.

I was fine until I woke up this morning and it all sunk in and I've been a little unstable since. Like I just want to crawl under a rock and pretend this isn't really happening kind-of unstable. Add in crazy preggo hormones and a horrible trip to the Volkswagen dealership (6 hours later and my car's not done yet? I can't put into adequate words how much I loathe VW of CC.) and I'm just one big ball of depressed, angsty energy. Granted, I might be even more on edge if I was also still on the Kenya team, but that doesn't make it easy to shoo my hubs onto a plane tomorrow morning. Jordan and I figured out that this will be the longest stretch of time that we've been separated (and the greatest distance apart) since we've been married. I mean, it's Kenya! For 2 weeks!

I would never be strong enough to be a military wife.

For those of you creepers who read my blog and think it's a great time to break into my house just know I have a house alarm, a ferocious dog and 3 loaded guns in my nightstand. Take that, chancho.

On Flying

The blog's been quiet recently and it's because I took a little impromptu-ish trip home this last weekend. I say impromptuish loosely. I definitely skirted a few responsibilities here in Rockport, and it was finalized pretty late in the game, so that counts, right?

The drive to Houston-Hobby was strangely slow and when Jordan & I realized that we'd left the car's toll tag at home, it was not pretty. Basically, I got to the airport with like 40 minutes until my flight was scheduled to depart. I was not-so-politely told by the lady at the check in counter that I was indeed very late. She proceeded to make me sign a form stating I'd come back to the airport to claim my luggage in the very likely event that it didn't make it onto my flight. Awesome. So I skate over to the security line, see it's backed up to the 15 minute mark and break out in a cold sweat. The bottle of water I'd recently consumed was really haunting my pregnant bladder while waiting in security, so the bathroom was my first stop and while I was mid-squat, I heard an announcement about a final boarding call and realized they were talking about my flight. I dashed out of the restroom, hoping I wasn't being judged for not washing my hands and ran (yes, I was that fool who runs in the airport) to my gate and made it on the plane... where I proceeded to wait with everyone else for another 30 minutes to push back from the gate.

By the way, my bags made it.

I was pleasantly surprised to have smooth sailing both to and from Augusta. Although technically I flew at like just barely pregnant 4 weeks and had no issues, I was warned by more than a few people that airsickness only affected them during pregnancy. Being that I am plagued with motion-sickness anyway, I was especially concerned for my inner ear and gastrointestinal system on this flight. But no barf-bags were required for this girl. Sure I employed a few pharmacological agents to quell my nausea, but considering I always take something when I fly, this was not new. As we were making the final approach into Atlanta, I turned to the girl complete stranger sitting next to me and remarked excitedly, "I'm so glad I didn't hurl!"She seemed equally excited and a little creeped out.

On the way back, I was that difficult person who opted out of the x-ray scanner, poking my belly out a little further and making it clear to all the security agents that I was pregnant. And what happens? They made me stand and wait next to the scanner for 5 minutes while waiting for a female TSA agent. So much for avoiding radiation (I probably would've been less exposed to just hop in the tunnel and be done lickety split.) But instead, I had a nice conversation with the TSA lady about first trimester woes while she felt up my boobies.

All in all, I'd say it was a success.

Baby's First Race

For the third year in a row, I ran a leg of the Beach to Bay Relay Marathon. Except this year, I toted my baby along with me.

Really really ridiculously early in the morning.

This year I lucked out and ran the 3rd leg of the race (First year I got stuck running the last leg, which is the pits. Last year I ran leg 2, which wasn't bad.).  For those of you who aren't from around these parts, leg #3 is a 4.4 mile hike over the JFK causeway which connects Corpus to Padre Island. Anything after leg #3 is just too late in the morning which equals too hot, and leg #1 is on the beach, so I've learned that choosing either #2 or #3 is the way to go.

Source

Each year, I dread this race. I don't know why I continue to agree to run with a team, because I just absolutely dread every second leading up to the baton exchange. I mean, anyone who signs up to run a race in Corpus Christi in the middle of May is a glutton for punishment. Sitting in the shade at 7am was pretty pleasant, but add an hour and a half to the day and take away the shade and it gets really warm really fast. But then before I realize it, the 4 miles are behind me and I can see the next chute ahead and I remember that it's not so bad after all. The first mile of leg #3 has an ugly climb up a bridge that begins the causeway, but once you're at the top, the view over the waterway is fantastic. Running back downhill isn't half bad either. However, just so we're clear, once you're up and over the bridge portion, there's still ton of causeway left to travel.

Pros: #1. Had a tailwind breeze I wasn't running against.

Cons: #1. It was HOT.  #2. The smell coming off of the waterway (Laguna Madre) was rank. Had this taken place during my first trimester, the stink of stale seawater and marine life would have made me super nauseated.  #3. No water stations or portapotties on the bridge.  #4. The last .75 mile was off the bridge and back at sea level where there was NO breeze (see also Con #1).

For the first time ever, I ran with a sponsored team this year, which means fun matchy-matchy race shirts (see below) and registration fees comped by our sponsor. This is definitely the way to go! Many thanks to Meredith for inviting me to join the Shake N Bake team (and not being overly uptight over the slower-than-usual pregnant girl bringing the team time down by a few minutes). Our team motto was "If you're not first, you're LAST!" which is especially comical considering we were nowhere NEAR first. Also for the first time ever, I didn't carpool with anyone. The last 2 years I've ridden along with other people and had no worries about driving around in Corpus with 15,000 other race-goers. In hindsight, this wasn't as dreadful as I made it in my mind, thinking of navigating by myself through horrible traffic, finding nowhere to park and missing the shuttle completely. None of those things happened. I'd add this to the Pros list, but there were roaches on the shuttle.

On the back is the motto & some groovy flames.

All in all, I'd say that next year I'll probably dread it once more, still agree to run and then at the end of my leg remember it's not so bad after all.

16 down...

24 to go! 

Wont it be a relief when I get to the opposite of this week... 24 weeks down (and a viable baby!) and 16 left? Regardless, I can't believe 4 months have already streaked by. And we're getting awfully close to our busy youth ministry summer schedule, so I'm sure the next few months will move at the speed of light. In the next 6 weeks alone, I have planned a weekend trip to Georgia, Jordan is going to Kenya for 2 weeks (during which my lovely lovely sister will fly here to keep me company during his absence), VBS at church, and summer camp (the first of two!) for our high school students, which just so happens to be in Tennessee.

And Tennessee is a nice segue into some of my interesting new pregnancy-related issues. You could say that I've gained a reputation at church for having a bladder of steel. Being a nurse will do that to you. Don't see the correlation between Tennessee and bladder size, you say? Well, imagine you're taking a couple dozen students in church vans on a long trip. Sometimes they need gentle reminders to use the facilities when there are facilities available. And then I was the person shouting barking from the front seat "You shouldve gone when you had the chance! We arent stopping for 3 more hours, so hold it!" Now enter pregnant Hollie who makes frequent trips to the little girls room. For example, in the 3 measly hours I was at church on Wednesday night, I HAD to pee twice. Many of our students have gotten a good laugh at my sudden reversal of pee-holding abilities, but most are now breathing a sigh of relief knowing we'll stop about 100 times on the way to Tennessee this summer.

What else is going on you say? Pregnancy brain (or placentabrain as Bobi Jo puts it!) is in full swing. When combined with another pregnancy issue, *ahem* constipation, I have nothing left to believe but that this baby has sucked out my brains and shoved them up my butt. Classy, I know. But seriously, there's nothing going on upstairs and nothing moving downstairs. And I hear this brain dead stupor only gets progressively worse from here, heaven help my poor husband. What was I talking about again?

Same red tank top & jeans.    +2 weeks.

Stats!!!

Size: Avocado! (or 4.5" long)

Cravings: Still nothing specific, although I told Jordan this morning that the baby said it wanted a doughnut for breakfast (which totally worked! Such a great hubby!)

Aversions: Not too many anymore, although I think now that I'm out of my healthy eating habits, the junky stuff just sounds more appealing!

Movement: Was it gas bubbles or baby? Not sure yet, so I'll say no to movement.

Gender: No Clue!!!

Clothes: Normal tops, pants, and dresses (except for one pair of jeans that I could barely squeeze into pre-prego. They're now held together with a hair tie)

Looking Forward To: Spending some time with my family next weekend (first visit home since announcing I was pregnant), and feeling some little movements!

What I owe

I found this hysterical website while I was out stalking some blogs.

So in honor of mother's day, I think we should all fill out this little questionnaire to see exactly how much we owe our moms for bringing us into this world.

Labor Reparations

Apparently I owe my mom something like $112 and some change or something. The whole c-section thing really did me in. Jordan owes $50ish, although he doesn't know (remember?) much about the whole pregnancy/labor/delivery thing, which is kind of the basis for the whole questionnaire.

Take a minute and enjoy this little quiz. Then call your mom and tell her that you'll forever be indebted to her $112 & some change. Or whatever your grand total may come to.

Oh & don't forget to say Happy Mother's Day.

Spreading the News

For about as long as we've been married, Jordan and I have agreed that when we jumped on this baby train thing, that we'd keep our business under the rug until that first 12 weeks was behind us. The combination of seeing some of our close friends go through first trimester losses, coupled with my nurse brain just led us to be more cautious with our news. It just seemed like a good idea, so that's what we did.

Early in the morning, on February 25, the stick-of-destiny said "Pregnant." It suddenly became a lot harder to keep our huge secret than I anticipated it would be! We mostly stuck to our guns, but agreed that we would tell our parents and sisters after my first appointment/sono with my doctor. Fast forward to March 20, finally seeing our little bean for the very first time and hearing baby Mims' sweet heartbeat. I was almost 8 weeks along at this point and was dying to share our big news! We made the rounds, calling our parents and sisters on speakerphone and dropping the baby bomb. It was a joyful occasion and I loved having extra people to complain to confide in.

It seemed like an eternity getting to that first appointment and telling a tiny handful of people. The 4 weeks following were even longer! We knew that this news was a long time coming, so we had a lot of fun coming up with exciting ways to announce our pregnancy to our two biggest circles - our church congregation and my Labor & Delivery coworkers.

I still don't know how I hid a pregnancy for almost 13 weeks from the rest of the L&D staff, but I'm pretty stinkin proud of myself! I mean, these women are honed in on pregnancy! The plan was to spill the beans at church, and then the next day I worked, I'd share our surprise to my coworkers. I made a fun little announcement card for my coworkers and a pan of cake batter blondes (in shades of pink & blue!). My well-meaning coworkers have been hounding me for years about getting on the babywagon, so the news was met with squeals and tears and laughter. It was priceless!

However awesome telling my coworkers was, telling our church really was a huge highlight! After that 8 week ultrasound, Jordan started announcing to the students that we were having a "Super Secret Special Guest" on April 22. He announced it sunday morning, wednesday night, basically anytime we were around a group of students or adults, we'd make sure they knew to be at church on April 22. We were both a steel trap, and didn't give away a single hint about our Big Guest. We got tons of guesses - TONS of guesses. After hearing some of them, I was honestly worried that our big guest would be a disappointment... I mean, Tim Tebow? Shane & Shane? Francis Chan, Bethany Hamilton, John Piper, Jeremy Lin, Chris Tomlin... We heard lots of big names.

So, to try and live up to the big name hype, we made a fun little video to announce baby Mims. It was met with lots of love and excitement! We heard from so many folks that this baby is a better guest and a bigger surprise than Tim Tebow! It is wonderful to feel such support from our church family.

Check out our baby baby baby video!

On Exercise

So back in January, I won a lovely little gift certificate from our church's auction for 2 months worth of a gym membership and 8 personal training sessions. They threw in a water bottle also, for good measure. Fast forward a few weeks and life took a pretty dramatic twist in the baby direction. I held onto the gift certificate for weeks and weeks and weeks and finally cashed it in a week ago from Saturday.

Yay for gym time!

Now, for those personal training sessions. Can you say I was feeling a little apprehensive? That might be an understatement. Visions of 5:30am sessions on my day off. Seriously, who can function that early in the morning? Some Most mornings I find myself in a drowsy stupor while attempting to shower & get dressed for work. In my head, I saw frightening images of doing burpees until I barfed. Working out tired muscles with a foam roller until I shed tears. Then, enter Fred, my trainer. Those of you Rockportians may know of Fred (don't spoil the ending). The guy wears steel-toe boots. Enter more apprehension.

Last Thursday, I nervously found my way to Rockport Health & Fitness for my first training session. Fred was there in his steel-toe boots waiting to punish my body to the point of breaking. Or so I thought.

Turns out, my training session was awesome. We worked out my wimpy upper body and he walked me through each weight machine, pointing out how to maneuver each machine to correctly fit my body, and the proper mechanics to engage the appropriate muscles. We worked in a methodical, deliberate order and I left feeling refreshed. The next day I may or may not have been able to wash my hair. But that's neither here nor there.

Since the first session, I've been back for a upper body revisit and a lower body workout. I certainly don't shake in my Asics now at the sight of Fred, but appreciate his willingness to answer questions, always pointing me in the right direction. Last night, I may have even seen him crack a smile or two during our session.

I'm sure this topic will segue into all sorts of unsolicited advice regarding the topic of exercise and pregnancy. Believe me, I've already gotten a considerable amount of unsolicited advice so far, and I'm sure it's just the tip of the unsolicited-motherhood-advice-iceberg. I ran 3+ miles worth of hills in the icy rain the day I found out I was pregnant. I like to exercise (especially since I'm no longer in the business of losing weight and therefore have welcomed dairy, carbs, and sugar back into my diet wholeheartedly). My doctor knows I run. My doctor knows I see a personal trainer. Exercise is probably the absolute least of my pregnancy worries, and was great at relieving my first trimester nausea. So here's to hoping for 6 more awesome training sessions, logging more miles on my sneakers, and having a healthy baby.

Second Trimester!

Hello there 14 weeks! It's so good to see you! 

I told Jordan last night and I hope I haven't jinxed myself, but this week has been great. I haven't had any nausea since Sunday and couldn't take a nap yesterday when I laid down and tried. I really can't complain because I know my first trimester could've been so much worse. However, 13 weeks of nausea and fatigue got pretty old there towards the end. I was lucky (knock on wood!) to never actually BE sick, just feel pretty puny. Some days were worse than others, and some weeks were harder than others (Mission Lab anyone!?). Thankfully, it's all behind me now and I'm both excited to feel great and surprised that the first 13 weeks went by so quickly!!!

I don't really feel like I'm "showing" all that much, especially in normal clothes. After a big meal, I may have a little bellybutton bulge, but for the most part, it just seems like I'm in that awkward looks-chubby-but-not-necessarily-pregnant phase. I won't comment on weight gain, mostly because I haven't weighed myself recently, but I'm pretty sure it's around 6-7lbs or so. I hope newfound second trimester energy will motivate me to get out and run more regularly!

14 weeks!

Stats!!

Size: Lemon (or about 3.5" long!)

Cravings: None so far, although pizza has consistently sounded appetizing and not nauseating! I wouldn't say that i've ever HAD to have anything specific yet!

Aversions: Plain scrambled eggs, the Advocare meal replacement shakes (HA!), some seafood and most green vegetables.... basically all the healthy foods that made up my entire 24dc diet! How funny!

Movement: None yet!

Gender: No clue!

Clothes: Normal pants, tops, and dresses. 

Looking forward to: my next appointment on Wednesday!