Chuck Grimmett

29 Weeks

Baby Size

Caleb is the size of a butternut squash at 15.2-15.5 inches long and about 2.5 pounds.

Highs

The nursery is well under way! Josh’s dad came down this weekend and assembled the crib and helped us set up the rug and generally clean up all of the tools we had accumulated in the room from building the closet last weekend.

If you want your excitement level to increase exponentially, put a crib in your nursery! I just love the setup so far and find myself sticking my head in there whenever I walk by.

Venus also approves and has tested out Caleb’s bed for him. So considerate of her.

We also finished up the closet with Josh mudding over the old nail holes and sanding it down, so I could patch up the paint. I caulked the closet unit to the wall, so everything looks nice and clean. Now we can start filling it with tiny clothes!

I had another doctor’s appointment this week, and everything continues to look good. Caleb had a strong heartbeat at 145 bpm, and she said I’m measuring well. I felt very prepared when she asked me about a hospital tour and a childbirth class since we have those booked for August. Now that I’m in my third trimester, I get to go to the doctor every 2 weeks instead of every 4. Oh boy!

Lows

It hasn’t been the best week for my self esteem. I don’t particularly care about the number on a scale or the baby bump, but I’ve really seen the weight gain in my face this week, and that has been hard.

(I don’t say any of this because I need encouragement or for people to tell me it’s normal and all that. I understand, but it doesn’t mean I’m happy to see my puffy face.)

Other than that, today has been a bad day for my back, but I’ve had quite a few good days, so I’m sure it’ll feel better relatively soon.

28 Weeks

Baby Size

Caleb is the size of an eggplant at 14.8 inches long and about 2.2 pounds.

Highs

We made some good progress on the nursery over the weekend! Josh bought a closet organization system weeks ago, and a dozen or so boxes have just been sitting in there waiting to be assembled.

We spent about 5 hours on Saturday and then maybe 3 on Sunday to get it finished up. It was definitely a more complicated project than my bookshelf since Josh had to cut the shelves, but I got to use our impact driver for the first time! And now we have a nice closet AND space in the rest of the room to start moving his furniture in.

We toured a few additional daycares and are pretty much done touring commercial places in the area. Just still need to decide on budget and commercial versus in-home versus…some other arrangement. You just have to decide so early because one daycare we called had a waiting list until May 2020!

Caleb moves a LOT some days, and I love it. I don’t always love when he pushes specifically on one spot, but that has been rare. I’m getting so excited to finally meet him!

Lows

I overdid it with my run-walking early last week and got pretty sore. The weight of the the belly really pulls on you and all of the surrounding ligaments!

Ya know, some days I just don’t feel good. Not always full days. But the extreme amount of energy I’ve had before is definitely gone. Sometimes I just need to eat (like half a pizza, eat), and sometimes I need a nap, but I still have the ambition to get a lot of things done, so there’s some tension there.

Other than that I’ve noticed some shortness of breath or inability to take a deep breath, especially when I sit since it feels like my belly just takes up all of my lung space.

27 Weeks

Baby Size

Baby Mo aka Caleb is the size of a cabbage at 14.5 inches long and weighs 2 pounds. My own little cabbage patch baby!

Highs

Hellooooo third trimester! I am excited to be in the home stretch even if the third trimester is the equivalent of the last 10k of a marathon.

I got to do Peachtree! My friend Jenn ran-walked with me, and it went by much faster than expected. I thought it was going to be hard to walk so much of the race because it would stand out, but there are so many people, that it didn’t matter! We did a pattern of 5 minutes walking, 2 minutes running for the first half and then 5 minutes walking, 3 minutes running for the second half, and then ran the full last half mile or so. It’s probably the first time I’ve never negative split at Peachtree!

Since there’s walking to the start and walking to the car after the finish, it was quite the day on my body! I took a lot of rest days after the race and have been able to run-walk longer segments since then – sometimes even with no pain! It certainly isn’t easy with my ever-growing belly, but at least my back doesn’t feel like it’s breaking.

We made some great progress on the nursery as well! My parents spent Saturday with us, and we moved my desk upstairs. I feel like I have to do a double-take every time I pass the nursery now because it’s so empty! That will certainly change as the giant pile of boxes in our entryway are full of nursery items.

Moving out my desk really helped with my visual planning as well. With the back wall cleared out, I measured the whole room and windows and doorways and closets and drew out the floor plan to scale. Then I drew the planned furniture pieces to the same scale, colored them and cut them out, so I could move them around the floor plan. I’m getting excited! And I got a lot of enjoyment out of all the planning this weekend.

Last nursery update, isn’t this the cutest clock you’ve ever seen?! It was only $8.50 at Bed, Bath & Beyond!

We went on our first 2 daycare tours at the end of last week and have some additional tours planned this week. Josh has been spearheading the daycare search, and it’s been great to just show up when I’m supposed to and not have to do the research.

We also registered for our childbirth class. I’ve been reading a lot about them, and since I’ve never had a child before and would prefer to not have an epidural, I’d like to prepare myself. I saw one quote from a woman where she said it’s not enough to just want to make it through without drugs. It was like she read my mind! I just assumed since I’m an athlete and am decently mentally strong and understand dealing with pain, that would be enough. Probably better to be prepared, though! Interested to see what we learn there in August.

Lows

Mainly just the general aches and pains of growing. I’m hot a lot, my back hurts a lot, and I find myself out of breath very easily. I had a rough Monday in my new office space since it is so much warmer, but it’s improved with a small fan and with using natural light from the window instead of having the overhead lights (aka generators) on.

26 Weeks

Baby Size

Baby Mo is the size of an acorn squash at 14 inches long and 1.7 to 2 pounds. For a non-produce comparison, he’s about the size of a VHS tape!

Highs

We are in the DOUBLE DIGITS until my due date! 98 days to go!

I feel better about making some nesting progress compared to last week. We finally picked a crib, and it arrived today (thank you to the Morrisons!). I think I need to officially relocate my desk to upstairs to make room for all of the assembly we need to do. I’m a little sad about leaving my office (mostly the ceiling fan), but there are a number of to-dos waiting on me to relocate as the first step, and I might as well do that now.

I also had lunch with my friend Jacque (who is a great mom!) and spent two hours picking her brain about childbirth and doulas and daycares and all sorts of topics. There are a number of advantages to being a “second mover” when having kids, and getting advice like this is near the top, followed by the trash bags of borrowed maternity clothes. 🙂

I also have progressed to a little bit of running with my walking! Running isn’t terribly comfortable, but it’s also not the excruciating pain I was having a few weeks ago. I feel much better about my Peachtree prospects now that I know I can run at least a few minutes here and there.

Oh – and I passed my glucose test so no gestational diabetes here. Which is good news because ice cream is a pretty important part of my diet right now.

Lows

Not being in constant pain makes everything else in life seem pretty good, so there’s not much here. I did have a pretty drastic “pregnancy brain” moment earlier this week where I could NOT figure out how to spell the word “succinct.” I even said it out loud, sounded it out, and couldn’t get close enough for Google’s dictionary to help me out for quite a while. It was both frustrating and amusing.

Other than that, I’m not sleeping terribly well, but it isn’t bothering me too much.

25 Weeks

Baby Size

Baby Mo is the size of a cauliflower at 13-13.5 inches long and about a pound and a half. I also read that my uterus is currently the size of a soccer ball which seems gigantic!

Highs

Josh and I took a long weekend trip to the beach! Even though I didn’t enjoy the heat and humidity, I definitely took advantage of floating in the pool as well as digging a hole in the sand for my belly, so I could lay on my stomach. If only they made mattresses with sand pits, so I could sleep on my stomach again…

My sacrum/SI issues continue to improve, so I can go for actual walks now! I walked up to an hour at the beach, and then this Monday I walked 4.5 miles. Running is still very uncomfortable, so it’s looking like Peachtree will be a long (very long) walk for me. I definitely have some FOMO about not being able to run as well as some general worries about the experience of walking a 10k (seriously, so long to go walk), but it’s the 50th anniversary of Peachtree and will be my 11th one, and I want to be there.

Everything seems to be going well with the baby’s health as well! I had my glucose test today, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as everyone says. People say the glucose drink is disgusting, but I thought it tasted just like Sprite, maybe a tad sweeter. Baby had a strong heartbeat at 136, and he was quite the wiggle worm after I drank the glucose drink which is fun.

Lows

I have a decent amount of back pain / discomfort not necessarily related to my sacrum/SI issue. I am just generally uncomfortable with staying in any position (whether sitting or standing or laying down) for too long. And I’m only going to get bigger!

There’s also a bit of “time is running out” panic I occasionally get since I still haven’t moved out of the office/future nursery, and we have a number of things to do on top of that. But 15 weeks is still a lot of time!

24 Weeks

Baby Size

Baby Mo is the size of a cantaloupe at 11.3-11.8 inches long and about 1.3 pounds.

Highs

I got to see a lot of my coworkers and Praxis participants as well as former coworkers at a conference last week. It was so fun to meet some people in person for the first time as well as catch up with old friends. A number of the speakers I used to work with are moms, so I got some good advice along the way as well!

A moment that really stood out to me was when I got the chance to speak with Magatte Wade. I am a huge Magatte fan, and she squealed over my belly and dubbed herself the baby’s Auntie. To have someone who is incredibly busy doing amazing things with her life even know I was pregnant ahead of time and say she can’t wait to meet my child made me tear up on the spot.

Another moment of extreme gratitude was toward my mom! While the conference was great, there was a lot of sitting in uncomfortable chairs, and my back was a wreck at the end of every day. Mom drove all the way to Atlanta on Sunday and just rubbed my back for nearly an hour. She did a number of other PT-related things to try to help my SI-related pain, but laying on my pillow fort surrounding my belly (to be able to be on my stomach) and her rubbing my back was just so nice. And it worked! We went for almost a 20 minute walk after that (the longest I’ve walked in weeks), and I didn’t have any pain!

Even though my SI / sacrum issues haven’t fully resolved, the improvement to be able to go on walks has been great! I have impatiently tried running a few times (shocker), but the difference in force/impact is just too much right now. I’m still not giving up hope on Peachtree, though!

Lows

Really this is just some aches and pains and wishing I could run. Diaphragm pain is my newest growth pain, and I know he’ll start invading my lung and rib cage space soon enough. Oh boy!

And even if I can’t run, at least I can do every day life without pain like I was a couple of weeks ago. And there are other forms of exercise! I swam laps one day last week. It started comically bad, and I felt like my lungs had zero capacity, but it’s still an option.

23 Weeks

Baby size

Baby Mo is the size of a grapefruit! He’s about 11.5 inches long and a bit over a pound in weight. From here on out he is expected to “gain weight rapidly.” Oh boy…

Highs

I got another garbage bag of maternity clothes from a friend! There are several advantages to having kids after your friends, and this is certainly one of them. All of the advice is helpful, too. I am particularly excited about all of the tank tops since it’s almost officially summer.

I built my new bookcase upstairs and have all of my books moved out of the office-will-be-nursery. I still have some organizing to do, but it felt like a good step toward moving out of the office (even though I am taking my sweet time since it’s cooler in there than the loft where I am moving).

I had some improvement with my SI pain (more below), but the best was after sitting in a reclining chair at the movies for a couple of hours this weekend, I was pain free for the walk back to the car! When you’ve been waddle-limping for over a week, you take what you can get.

Lows

My SI pain continues. Thankfully I’ve improved to the point that I can walk around the house mostly pain free (huge quality of life improvement), but I still can’t go for a walk without pain, and I certainly can’t run. I saw my physical therapist at the end of last week, and she said my hip alignment looked fine and that my sacrum was rotated, which is what is pinching my SI on the right side. That was a little discouraging because it’s a bit easier to fix a hip alignment issue with some manual adjustment and exercises. I’ve been doing the recommended stretching and exercises for the sacrum issue as well, but it appears to be a harder problem to fix. I also got a new SI belt to wear throughout the day that is a big tighter to hold everything in place.

But – it could be worse! I’m still holding out hope to be able to run Peachtree and have 3 more weeks to get back to running. Cross your fingers for me.

22 Weeks

Baby Size

Baby Mo is the size of a coconut! He’s about 11 inches long and weighs 15 ounces, maybe even up to a pound. It’s a little crazy to think of how much weight he’ll gain in the next 18 weeks…

Highs

I called ahead to the ultrasound office before my regular appointment last week and was able to pick up the pictures from two weeks ago! I’m excited to have them as keepsakes. There’s even one of him sucking on his fingers!

I had a good check up appointment as well. His heartbeat is still strong, and she said all of his kicks and jabs are only a good sign.

Speaking of which, I can feel him nearly every day now! My favorite is when he moves a lot until Josh comes over and then (of course) stops.

Lows

Re-aggravating my SI joint last week has been much worse than expected. Despite stretching and pool running and trying to take it easy (which I am bad at), it still hurts to even walk. Running is out of the question, and I missed out on Global Running Day today. I’m trying to be patient, but I’m in a pretty bad mood at the end of every day since anything other than sitting/laying on the couch is painful.

Thanks for reading! As a reminder, I’m participating in a 10-week fundraising effort for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and there are only 3 DAYS LEFT! Every donation works toward a cure. Donate HERE.

21 Weeks

Baby Size

Baby Mo is the size of carrot – about 10.5 inches long and 11-12.5 ounces. 21 weeks is when they change from “crown to rump” measurements to “head to toe” measurements, so that accounts for the big jump from last week!

Highs

I’m going to keep my office for a couple more months before we turn it into the nursery, but I spent some time this weekend measuring spaces and moving some furniture around upstairs to decide where we’ll put my desk. I do a lot of video calls, so I not only needed an outlet and a decent amount of wall space but also an acceptable background for those calls.

We put some other organization plans in motion as well. I got a new bookshelf to move my books out of the nursery to make way for more baby items, and I’m excited to put that together this weekend.

Other than that I enjoy feeling the occasional jab as he starts moving around more. 🙂

Lows

It.is.so.hot. I know everyone is hot because we are experiencing record temps for this time of year, but my ability to deal with the heat and humidity feels impaired.

After weeks of little to no SI pain, I ran without my support belt this morning (I did last week as well with no troubles) and now the SI irritation is back with a vengeance. I guess I will be keeping the belt on from now on.

Thanks for reading! As a reminder, I’m participating in a 10-week fundraising effort for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and there are only 10 days left! Every donation works toward a cure. Donate HERE.

20 Weeks

Baby Size

Baby Mo is the size of a banana – about 6.5 inches long and 10-11 ounces (although they told me he was 11 ounces at my scan last week!).

Highs

Halfway there! Cue the music.

The anatomy scan went well! All of his organs got a thumbs up which was a huge relief since the anatomy scan is one of the last times you can find out something is wrong developmentally. Baby Mo wasn’t super cooperative at the scan, but I did get to see him suck his thumbs and fingers when he wasn’t completely hiding his face with his feet and hands. So cute!

He continues to be a wiggler as well. I think I don’t feel all of the subtle movements because almost every time I feel him, it’s significant. Josh was even able to feel him last night! I don’t feel him every day yet, though.

We got some fun baby items from garage sales/Facebook Marketplace last week as well! Josh has a coworker who scoped out some yard sales for us and got us a bouncer and a jump station for $10 each.

My biggest win was getting a BOB Revolution Pro stroller from Facebook Marketplace after weeks of searching and messaging various sellers. I don’t get why so many sellers don’t respond to messages, but I was pumped to find a lightly used one within 30 minutes and for a bargain. Having a stroller meant for serious running is important to me, but I really struggled with the $450-500 price tag. Luckily there are plenty of used ones out there, and I even found new ones for as low as $375 on sites like Zulily if you’re opposed to buying used.

Lows

The most important part of the anatomy scan was that he is healthy, but other than that, it was an incredibly frustrating experience.

I get my ultrasounds at a different office than my OB, and last time they saw me almost right at my appointment time. I assumed that would be the case again, so Josh came, hoping to get to see the ultrasound, and ultimately had to leave and go back to work after sitting with me in the waiting room for 45 minutes.

Once I actually went back, the ultrasound took about 40 minutes. It was very fun to see him for that long, but I didn’t realize the cost of that would be how sore I felt the rest of the day and afterward. I felt like I got punched in the lower stomach for a good 2 days.

And the ending was anticlimactic because the printer connected to my ultrasound broke, so I only got one photo (of his feet) to take home and show Josh. They had multiple techs come in to try to fix it, and everyone just kept saying “I’ve never seen this before,” and they said they couldn’t email me any of the photos either. I have a regular OB appointment again next week in the same building, so I am either going to call or stop by ahead of time to see if they can have some printed for me to pick up. It was definitely a bummer to not have anything to bring home to Josh!

Other than that I officially gave up on trying to run 6 days per week as I really tried to force that last week and was miserable by the end of it. And very tired! I need an extra day to have a later alarm as that makes it easier to get up on the other days (especially as it get hot and earlier wakeups become necessary).

Thanks for reading! As a reminder, I’m participating in a 10-week fundraising effort for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and there are only 2 weeks left! Every donation, even just $5, works toward a cure. Donate HERE.