As far as exercise goes, I am still loving the Slim and Toned Prenatal Barre workout that I’ve been doing since about 20 weeks. It has gotten progressively harder the last few weeks to do some of the exercises as my body grows and things loosen up. I was really sick along with two of my daughters a couple of weeks ago and took four days off of my workouts. When I started up again, I thought I was going to die I was SO incredibly sore! It was a huge wake up call for me to see how much my body had changed in just those few days. It’s incredible how pregnancy changes things. After going strong (5-6 days a week) my entire pregnancy, I felt it a lot taking those few days off. It hurt. Bad. I could hardly walk, I was crying one evening to my husband about how bad it hurt, and I was just plain miserable. I was slathering on my Deep Blue rub constantly and hardly leaving my heating pad! I kept going that week and did four days of the workout. Then I took three days off this last weekend (unintentionally). 

I planned to just take a little two day rest to recuperate,  but ended up slightly injuring myself on Saturday, leading to an extra day off on Monday. Because I have felt so GREAT this entire time, I sometimes (okay, most of the time) forget how far along I actually am. I was helping my husband load up a few things at our storage unit on Saturday and got up onto the bumper of the truck to get in the back. Then I realized it probably wasn’t a good idea, so I went to “hop” down, like I normally would . . . and completely misjudged the distance, landing me flat on my behind in the gravel. I stretched something a little too far in the process and it hurt. So from here on out I guess I should remember that I’m not very far from having a baby and all of that relaxin in my body is making things very loose and ready to be shifted around during delivery! 

Yesterday I was back at it, working out my lower body and it felt great afterward. The fact that I spent the rest of the day in the garden on my hands and knees planting didn’t feel so great, but I am glad that is done! By the end of the day yesterday I was in a lot of pain and am very sore today. I continued through my workout this morning and I know it helped. I was moaning to my husband last night about not knowing whether I should plow through and continue exercising and if that will help, or if I’m just going to be hurting at this point if I keep working out. We concluded that I have come so far and don’t want to give up now, and I have been specifically “training” my body and certain muscles to give birth. I feel strong and want to keep that through delivery and recovery. It hurts really bad right now from taking those little breaks and I think my body was suddenly confused and realized it was super pregnant! I feel so much better when I do exercise and it helps me be very productive for half of the day. Let’s face it, the other half I am slowly going down hill until I want to collapse into bed at 7 p.m! That’s just what growing a baby will do to a person, especially when there are three other children in the house (one of which is still very much a baby herself).