The Pregnancy Ironman - Trimester 3/The Run

The Finish Line is in Sight!

So now I'm well into the 3rd trimester and have finally finished work and started my maternity leave. Just like with the run leg of an ironman, trimester 3 is just about getting to the end for me.

For the past few months I've been working in paediatrics at a new hospital, Princess Margaret Hospital. My training has pretty much been put on hold for now because I don't seem to have much time or energy when I get home from work. My new job usually starts around 7am and I finish anywhere between 5pm and 10.30pm. Add in an hours drive each way and I'm usually just about ready to jump into bed by the time I get home. I was starting to get quite worried about lack of fitness and so was a little relieved to find out from my midwife that I had become anaemic. My pre-pregnancy ferritin (iron) levels had been above 300, now they had dropped to 8! It certainly seems like I'm growing a little Iron-man!

Most weekends I've managed to do a long walk on the trails but I'm definitely feeling heavy and unfit! One day a couple of weeks ago I went for a walk around King's Park. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for walking a good 8km or so. Then as I was walking up the last hill back to the car park, I got heckled by some random guy. I happened to be wearing my Busso IM t-shirt which had 'Swim-Bike-Run" written on the back. This random runner was jogging up behind me and shouted "It says swim-bike-RUN not swim-bike-WALK!" I'm not sure he saw my huge bump as he passed me! I like to think he did and got embarrassed. Maybe next time he'll think twice before heckling!

Exploring some of the local trails

Still don't get tired of seeing these guys!

As the finish line approaches, we have shifted our attention to baby-prep! My first project was to decorate a nursery for the new baby. I wanted to do a mountain landscape as a feature wall. After looking at stickers and wall paper and not finding anything I liked, I decided to try painting it myself. The first job was to prep the walls by doing all the filling and sanding. Once the walls were in a better condition, I roughly drew the mountain shapes on the wall and chose my colours. Next stage was to apply the painting tape. This is the most painstaking part of painting in my opinion! It takes ages. The actual painting took me about a week because each layer needed 3 coats of paint plus a day of drying before I could peel off the tape and reapply to the next layer!

However I was pretty please with the end results. We then ripped up the gross old carpet and blinds and added in a nice new carpet, curtains and baby furniture and finally had a decent looking room. It was only after a week of hard work and spending a small fortune on a cot that Mum decided to tell me that the baby is actually meant to sleep in our room! Thanks Mum!

 

Wall prep = yawn!

 

Mountains ready to be painted

Getting there!

The finished product!

The next phase of Project Baby-Prep was to attend ante-natal classes. For quite a while my midwife had been trying to get me to come along to the ante-natal classes at the hospital. I did my best to resist. However Mum managed to persuade me that they were a good idea... and who knows... I might even learn what a baby sleeps in!

I imagined the class to be a bunch of hippies practising breathing and hypnotherapy techniques. My worst nightmare! Imagine my horror when I walked into the first class and everyone was sat on the floor on beanbags! The first 3 classes (we had to attend 4 in total!) required a lot of patience. Our homework involved practising 'labour positions' and coming up with motivational quotes! Yeah right! Clearly Chris and I were not the star pupils!
The last class was more useful as we actually learned how to look after a baby. I had to demonstrate "swaddling" a baby or as Chris and I call it "burrito-wrapping." My prize for doing such a good job... nipple cream!! Not for the first time I wondered what I had gotten myself into!

Fortunately, my pals came to the rescue and reminded me that having a baby has it's good points too starting with an amazing baby shower!

How cool is this? Created by the amazingly talented Kendall!

In other news, Chris and I were surprised with a new challenge.  One night we woke up to a massive crash. We couldn't figure out what the problem was until the next morning when we saw our tree had fallen down. The tree is massive (I estimate about 20 tonnes) and we had to get rid of it before the fire season as the dead tree would pose a huge bush fire risk. So for what felt like the next 4 weeks we spent a long time cutting the wood into chunks and burning all the greenery. We eventually got some professional tree choppers in to help cut down some of our other trees as I became quite nervous about one falling and hitting the house. Once the trees were down, I realised our garden was actually much bigger than I thought! So my next project became designing a new garden. The first part was to fix up a very neglected rockery on the front of the drive! The rest of the design will have to wait until I'm able to do a little more heavy lifting. Watch this space!

So lucky it missed the house!

I think Chris was enjoying this more than me!

The first of many bonfires!

Chris bought me a "push-present"...I wasn't impressed!

Chris getting creative with the logs!

Free fire wood!

So you are probably wondering how Chris is coping with all this pregnancy stuff. Well unfortunately it seems pregnancy has been harder on him than me! He has definitely had his fair share of 'sympathy symptoms.' It started off with nausea and headaches (although his always seem to follow a few beers/whiskies!). Then he suffered with a bad back... fortunately he was able to book himself in for a lovely massage which he tells me worked wonders! Then the poor guy suffered with terrible bloating which wasn't helped by that fact that all his clothes recently have become too tight. Apparently they have all shrunk in the wash! But I reckon the worst thing for him is the boredom from not being able to do as much as usual. In his own words..."I'm not good at all this relaxing!"

On a completely unrelated note... I will soon be releasing a book entitled "What not to say to your pregnant wife!"

So with just a short time before Mini Stack arrives, I will mostly be attempting to get re-aqainted with this:

 My old friend the turbo trainer!

Whilst Chris continues his battle trying to evict our unwanted house guests!

Percy the Possum

And finally I can treat myself to the latest instalment of Harry Potter! 

 

See you on the other side!

The Pregnancy Ironman - Trimester 2/The bike

2nd Trimester - The bike 

As I mentioned previously, the second trimester for me was great. No more nausea or fatigue meant I could enjoy training again.

By this stage though I'd lost a lot of fitness through reducing the intensity of my training so I decided to train more by myself as I could no longer keep up with my teammates. I also felt safer cycling on my own or in a small group... less chance of a crash!

Chris had signed me up for the Busso 70.3 Ironman last year and now I was in 2 minds about whether I should compete. On the one hand, I had already paid for it and most of the team would be down in Busso for a fun weekend that I didn't want to miss out on. But on the other hand I knew I couldn't race hard and I was starting to get a bit nervous about being on the road with other triathletes. Triathletes are not exactly known for their amazing bike handling skills (except of course F4L athletes!)

In the end I decided to start (I literally made this decision stood on the beach about 5 mins before the buzzer went off!). I could always stop at any time.

After the start buzzer went, I very slowly walked into the sea to start the swim. I purposefully went right at the back and right at the edge to avoid any collisions with the other swimmers. I swam so far away from everyone else that I must have done at least an extra 500m! At one point even the surf life-saver checked to make sure I was going in the right direction! But I got out of the swim in one piece ready to start the bike ride.

The Busso bike course is pancake flat, but unfortunately I wasn't comfortable on my super aerodynamic TT bike anymore. My very tiny bump made it impossible to sit on the tri bars. Instead I used my roadie and settled in for a loooong 90km. I had to ride the whole thing without getting out of breath or raising my heart rate. At first it was quite infuriating watching people pass me, but I soon started to enjoy life in the slow lane as I could take the time to check out the scenery and watch the other riders. I think I counted about 4 wee stops too!

I finally started the run with the plan to just do one of the three 7km laps then withdraw. However I was actually feeling quite good after lap 1 so I set off on lap 2. About half way through lap 2 I started to feel very nauseated again and got some pain in my pelvis. This meant I had to start walking. By now I just had one lap to go so I thought I may as well finish even if I had to walk the final lap! I eventually finished in a time of around 6 hours 40mins... 1 hour and 35 mins slower than last year!! But even though everyone had finished much earlier in the day, my team mates had hung around to cheer me over the line! A gesture very much appreciated!!

Very slowly finishing the run!

Pancake Stack's first IM!

After Busso I decided to do no more racing until after the baby is born. I managed to continue cycling on the road until about 24 weeks and a few of the F4Lers took turns in keeping me company (thank you Kendall, Steve and Ash!). After that I did a few more rides on the trails with Chris to keep me company. Chris took no pity on me being 26 weeks pregnant and took us on a 40km MTB ride with 37km of climbing!! After this is decided to stick to the indoor trainer. I probably could have done a few more trail rides but the Perth weather had turned really wet which made me worry about skidding and falling off. By now I had a medium sized bump to worry about!

My running reduced massively as it became quite uncomfortable to run with a bump. One day at around 27/28 weeks I woke up feeling great and decided to join the group run. I did a fairly steady 7-8km and thoroughly enjoyed it. Unfortunately I couldn't walk for 2 days afterwards! No exaggeration.. I literally couldn't get out of bed! I thought I had broken my pelvis. I diagnosed myself with symphysis pubis dysfunction (SPD) which is where the ligaments become stretchy and the 2 wings of the pelvis widen. It actually felt like my pelvis had split open! It took about 2 weeks before I could walk normally again, so I decided to give up running for the time being!

Winter had well and truly arrived in Perth so Chris and I took a short holiday to Broome to get some Winter sunshine. A friend from uni (who now lives in NZ) met us in Broome and we spent 5 days relaxing in the sun, swimming, playing tennis and generally just chilling out and catching up. We also decided to hire some 'fat bikes' and explored the coast line. 

We also took a short trip down South. Chris surprised me for our 1 year wedding anniversary and had booked a really cool cabin in Denmark which is about 5 hours drive south of Perth. The SW of WA is beautiful and we spent the Saturday exploring some of the local scenery. Chris also sampled some of the local produce... Limeburner's Whisky! We took the long route home on Sunday to visit the giant trees in the Karri forests. These trees are massive, they grow up to 75m tall! The tallest trees are used as fire lookouts and you can climb to the top on some metal pegs that stick out the side of the trunk. There are no safety measures in place and I can't believe people are actually allowed to climb! I managed to persuade Chris to climb to the top. I'm not scared of heights but even I was terrified! Chris didn't talk to me for about 3 hours after! It was a peaceful drive home! It was a great weekend, definitely a spot to visit if you come to WA!

View from The Porongarup National Park

Yes Chris had a taste of every bottle just to make sure he was buying the best one!

Climbing the tree! Don't look down!

The 'ladder' to the top! Thats right..no rope, no harness, no chance if you fall!

A new challenge for our next visitors!

Now onto the final leg! Trimester 3 coming right up!

The Pregnancy Ironman - Trimester 1/The Swim

It turns out pregnancy is quite boring! So now I have plenty of time on my hands, I thought I'd write a blog about what we've been up to for the past 9 months. Warning... there is very little exciting going on so if you're bored easily then stop reading now! 

I have decided that pregnancy is a bit like an ironman triathlon. Firstly, they both have 3 very different legs. Secondly, they are both very long! And finally they both go much smoother if you are fit to start with! (At least thats what I have come to believe from my one time experience!)

1st Trimester - The Swim!

So just like in triathlon, the first leg has definitely been the worst for me. Although really I think I was let off very lightly with only some minor symptoms of nausea and tiredness. 

In January I started a new job in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. Medics sometimes joke that they put something in the water at O&G hospitals and maybe they do because within a few weeks of starting, we found out I was pregnant. Last year I made the difficult decision to leave physician training to become a GP. I did this for a few reasons, but mainly because I needed a better work-life balance. Although I enjoy hospital work, the long hours and weekend/night work would make it impossible for us to have a baby. Especially living so far away from family! The final straw was not having access to annual leave/part time work (I'm sure I've moaned to everyone about being refused leave for my own wedding!!). So I decided to re-train as a GP. This looked fairly straight forward, I had to sit 2 exams then do 18months as a GP registrar in the community then I would be a GP. Easy! Until the college found out that I had only ever done adult medicine. This meant I also had to complete a minimum of 10 weeks working in paediatrics. Unfortunately the only paediatric training hospital in Perth is Princess Margaret Hospital (sort of like the WA version of Great Ormond Street). So as you can imagine everyone wants to work there! I enquired about a short placement but they could only offer a minimum of 6 months and this would be the second 6 months of the year! Great! So I took a job in O&G for the first 6 months as this was another area of medicine I had avoided so far in my career.

To my surprise, I really enjoyed O&G. The hospital itself is really old-fashioned and reminded me of the hospitals back home. I felt the teams all worked together really well and I met some great people. I felt for the first time that the hospital actually cared about us and wanted to give us (the staff) a positive experience as well as the patients. After I told work I was pregnant, they were fantastic. I think the rota ladies tried their best to give me some easier shifts and I was given time off for scans and appointments etc. I decided this is definitely the place I was going to give birth!

I managed to carry on training throughout the first trimester, although I definitely reduced the intensity. I was still able to train most days of the week and felt pretty good. My obstetric friends had told me it was safe to continue training as long as I didn't over heat, I didn't get out of breath and I didn't allow my heart rate to rise too much! Great! This meant I really had to slow down and take things easy. I did the Elizabeth Quay sprint triathlon at around 8 weeks pregnant. I mainly did it because the Quay is Perth's new foreshore development and the triathlon was to celebrate it's grand opening. I didn't really race hard, I can't remember my time but I pretty sure I was somewhere towards the back of the pack!

Hmm, so I couldn't find any photos of the Elizabeth Quay triathlon but a blog needs photos! So here are few of my favourite tri pics that remind me I haven't always been a beached whale!!

Running with Peta during IMWA. Bad day for me made made better by helping out a friend! Now one of my favourite pics!

(photo credit: Dennis Tan - Paparazzi on the Run)

Teamies!

Looking awesome on the bike! I'll be back here soon! #unfinishedbuisness

From about 8 weeks onwards I started to feel quite nauseated which unfortunately was much worse with motion. The drive to and from work was the worst (I had to have a plastic containing in the passenger seat just in case!) but running and sometimes cycling also made me feel a bit queasy too. 

Fortunately, almost as soon as I hit the second trimester I felt like a new women. No nausea! No tiredness! Fantastic!

Just like in the ironman I survived the swim with just a bit of sea-sickness, now onto my favourite leg.. the bike!