CRAVINGS

Today marks 29 weeks --- only 11 more until Our Little One's arrival! 

Week 29 ... Baby's Heart Rate was 144 BPM

The third trimester is shot-putting me back into a drowsy haze - sorta like the first trimester except it has become harder to find a comfy position for sleeping. Jonny bought me a body pillow a few weeks ago, which has been the most awkward sleep-saver of all time!  A girlfriend of mine compared being pregnant and sleeping with a body pillow to the likes of wrestling an alligator – and she was SO right.

Another thing that helps me sleep well is exercise, so I hit the gym this morning.  My doctor advised that my heartrate should stay below 140 BPM while exercising, which is a comfortably slow pace that often gets boring. But the good news is that it allows for lots of people watching. Today, for example, I watched two guys that I’ll affectionately call “the meatheads.” I’ll never knock anyone who invests time in their health and physical fitness, but these guys were EXTRA muscle-ish and EXTRA invested in showing off their gym-skills  - handstands, running in circles with a 35 lb. plates above their heads, high-fiving each other in between push-ups. As I chugged along on the elliptical, I imagined the things they’d say to each other after their workout:

                Meathead #1: Hey, man. Wanna grab some food?

                Meathead #2: Nah, I’ve got some eggs and chicken in my fridge at home.

                Meathead #1: I got you. I’ll just grab a protein shake before I head out.

               

This mentally fabricated dialogue got me thinking about how hungry I was!  And in the spirit of that pregnant-brained moment, I have decided to dedicate this blog to stories about food cravings. I’ll preface this by saying 1) I don’t give-in to cravings all the time and 2) I’m not going to write about healthy cravings. I crave healthy things quite a bit actually, but they are kinda less fun to tell stories about. For example, I’ve been munching on a big bowl of watermelon while I’ve been writing this blog, but I can’t think of anything interesting to write about watermelon … so I won’t. J 

1.       Back in January, I wrote a short blog called “pickles” and showed a picture of the lunch I ate that day:  lentil soup, goldfish crackers, and dill pickles.  Let’s all join-in and recite a collective “eeewww!”  Seriously. How gross is that?

2.       I once told Jonny that I was craving an Oreo.  He jumped in his car and came home with a grocery bag FILLED with Oreo-flavored things. He then apologized that he didn’t find an Oreo Cheesecake – ha! All I wanted was like, AN Oreo - singular! 

3.       About a month ago, I told Jonny there was chicken marinating in the fridge and asked if he’d grill it for dinner.  After he grilled the chicken to absolute perfection, I had a complete change of appetite and embarrassingly told him that I couldn’t eat it – all I wanted was noodles.  So, he made us a substitute meal of spaghetti with jarred red sauce – no muss/no fuss – and it tasted SOOO good.   Best.Husband.Ever!!

4.       Last week I went to dinner at a Mexican place with my friends Lindsay & Meghan.  We ordered what Lindsay call’s the “Mexican Flag” --- salsa, queso, and guacamole --- because the dips are the colors of the Mexican Flat (red, white, and green). Though I DID share the queso, I’ll admit that I didn’t want to. I could have drank it right from the bowl.

5.       And that brings me to this morning.  It was a beautiful, sunny morning that screamed “Today is not like every other day --- treat yourself to something other than a hardboiled egg for breakfast.”  So I drove to our local coffee shop, Hubbard & Cravens, which has the BEST decaf coffee and really great bran muffins.  I ordered both of those things to-go and then started driving home.  Just after I turned onto our street, I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I wanted a Poppyseed Bagel. I literally pulled over, put the car in park, and internally debated whether I should to turn the car around and go get one. WHAT?   Ultimately, I made the decision to head home and enjoy my Bran muffin, but I’ve been wondering all day if I made the right choice. Maybe we’ll have bagels for dinner …

What the baby-belly looks like on an elliptical machine (where have my feet gone??)!