Project Fit Pregnancy: Week 32

Well, we’ve been in the third trimester for a full month now. It’s good to know that “the most miserable trimester” is one third of the way over. Besides, it makes us that much closer to meeting our baby.

Gabriel’s been telling Garrett that were having a baby, which he thinks is great, but then Gabriel tells him he/she is in mommy’s tummy, and he just looks at Gabe like he has three eyes before going back to play with his cars.

As Summer here at the farm gets busier and busier, my workouts become more and more sporadic. Once again, I only managed to squat twice last week. Once again, I plan to shoot for three times this week. Fortunately, again thanks to the warm weather, I’m still getting plenty of less formal exercise. Pushing a stroller sure isn’t as much of a “piece of cake” as it used to be, which makes me feel better about counting it in with my exercise.

Monday:
Squat – 95 lbs 3×5
Bench press 75 lbs 3×5

Wednesday:
Squat – 100 lbs 3×5
Over head Press – 55 lbs 3×5
Shrugs – 45 lbs 2×5

As you can see, I finally added a third exercise. Woohoo! 45 lbs is a really light shrug, but that was just sort of a test drive to see how it went. I suppose I’ll add 5 lbs per workout until I start getting some muscle soreness. Shrugs are supposed to help prevent delayed muscle tension when you’re performing a lot of shoulder-tensing work. You know, like pumping 3lb dumbbells for half an hour or say, carrying 7 (ish) pound newborn around all the time. Here’s hoping it works!

Heartburn

I tend to get a lot of heartburn during pregnancy which, not surprisingly becomes more of a nuisance the further along I get, so I thought it might be nice to share a few ways that I’ve found to control it. These may not work for everyone, but so far, they’re working for me. I may have to update you over the next two months to let you know how it’s going though!

• Look for your triggers – Pay attention to what you eat and what triggers your heartburn. For me, a big trigger is chocolate. Bummer for me, but from what I understand, that’s a pretty common trigger.
• Whole foods – I haven’t looked into it to find out exactly why, but I definitely notice a correlation between the type of food I eat in general, and how much heartburn I have. Keeping the refined foods out is a huge help.
• “Fasting” – Intermittent fasting is becoming something of a fad in numerous variations. It’s not for everyone, (and I think some of the variations should be for no one), but I think it’s been the single biggest factor in minimizing heartburn. I think if I stuck to it consistently, “IFing” might even eliminate it. Why? I think it’s because it allows your body to deal with what’s already in it, maybe even giving your digestive tract a rest before starting again with a “clean slate” so to speak. For me, I shoot for eating between the hours of 8-10:00 Am and 6:00 Pm, giving myself a “fasting window” of 14-16 hours. On those days when I stick to it, I have no heartburn.
•  digestive enzymes  – It’s not always possible to “fast”, whether because we have a dinner engagement with friends or family, or our schedule just gets out of whack, or whatever.  When that happens, Popping a few  digestive enzymes  works wonders. It’s not an instant fix, but it does help. You may want to keep them up out of the sight of your kids though – mine thinks they’re candy.