Tour Down Under: The Pregnancy Ironman

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: