Previous installments of Feel the Burn can be found here. “Working Out in Your First Trimester” is here and “Working Out in Your Second Trimester” is here.
I quit the gym today.
I had planned to go until next Tuesday, when I’d be 36 weeks pregnant and ready to slide blissfully into holiday-related indolence and two different kinds of stuffing, but I knew yesterday that I was done. Or rather, I knew yesterday that today would be my last day, and then back pain kept me awake most of the night so I said NOPE and bailed out.
You know, or you’re told, that your body will tell you when it’s over, and in my case, it definitely did. I was cruising, and then I was not. Things felt heavier, things felt lower, things felt tighter, things were not what they once were.
The third trimester had been pretty good to me, all told, at the gym. I didn’t see a huge drop in my abilities or comfort level from my second trimester, and the irritation I had felt about strength losses passed. I just didn’t care, really. I was happy just to be there, and enjoying how much credit you get from randos for showing up, period, when you’ve officially funhouse-mirrored out. Dudebros who used to withhold their “damn, that girl is DOING IT” head nods for really impressive shit were starting to practically chuck me under the chin for getting a drink of water from the fountain while idly checking my Twitter mentions.
And, for the record, working out hard this pregnancy has been an unqualified win. I am still putting on More Weight Than The Chart Says To, but that’s how it goes for my pregnancies, it’s 43 lbs each time whether I’m kale-and-kettlebells or bon-bons-and-Boogie Nights-on-cable, but my ankles aren’t swollen, my energy is up, and I just…hurt less. I’m really happy I kept going. I’m proud of it. I don’t care if I had to go back to Lady Pushups.
But the not-caring about strength loss has begun to morph into the lol nothing matters I remember from my first pregnancy, when your world can start to diminish around you into clock-watching (see left) and nesting (nesting is a REAL MOTHERFUCKING THING, it is NO JOKE) and just observing as the ratio of your thoughts about having another baby versus your thoughts about literally anything other than having another baby begins to shift.
The nesting is so curious. It can bring out Jolie Kerr in anyone. There’s been a tea stain on the carpet in the nursery for a year, and suddenly THE CARPETS NEEDED TO BE PROFESSIONALLY CLEANED. Nicole Callahan is a brave and detail-oriented Bert-type, but I MUST TEACH CALLAHAN ALL MY WISDOM IMMEDIATELY. The site will be fine without me but ALL FREELANCE POSTS THAT WILL APPEAR DURING MY MATERNITY LEAVE MUST BE LOADED INTO WORDPRESS SO NO ONE WILL NOTICE I LEFT. I’ve sterilized my breastpump parts. I’ve sorted the little clothes. I’ve figured out where to put my nursing chair. My co-sleeper is attached to my bed and has a copy of Texts From Jane Eyre and a bottle of Tums and a handful of plastic horses in it. I have purchased a 31 inch-high stuffed golden retriever toy for my newborn son to “give” my toddler daughter in a vain attempt to curry favour.
I’ll be here with you until Friday, Dec. 19th, or until I go into labour, by the way. And then I’ll miss you, but you’ll be just fine without me. Mallory is going to take over Link Roundups when I’m gone, and Nikki is already crushing it at submissions, and a nice woman gave us $75 in exchange for me promising to write up my birth story for you, so I think everything will go on as it should.
On a final note, back to fitness: literally everything I did slowly got worse over the last eight months, except for toe squats. Toe squats got better, bc my body’s natural impulse to sink backwards was counter-balanced by my belly. Solid as a rock.
Tags: feel the burn, fitness, pregnancy, twilight
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Nicole, everyone is going to notice that you left. There will be a NICOLE-SHAPED HOLE in our hearts until your return. Adorable baby photos will be our comfort, though.
We are already SO HAPPY AND EXCITED for you; the holidays are the perfect time to stay home and snuggle a new baby, and everything is gonna be great. <3
It hadn’t yet occurred to me how immensely valuable it must be to have you so well and truly in place before Nicole goes on maternity leave. (And, yes, because I am a childless fairytale hermit, it also hadn’t occurred to me that Nicole would go on leave and that there would be a Nicole-shaped hole in our hearts. TRUTH.)
Nicole, I’m so so happy for you and your family, and also for everyone here who will carry on so well while you’re elsewhere.
If it were not for the knowledge that Callahan is Ready, I would just not give birth.
lol can u imagine if it was just me
it…it could work
NICOLE WE’RE ALREADY DREADING MISSING YOU
Yes yes you will have the holidays and a new infant to distract you, and we will have the delight that is Roxane and the usual warm hug that is the Toast, but NICOLE, YOU CHIEF PART OF THIS ENTERPRISE, we miss you already.
idk, maybe you should reconsider this whole “having a baby next month” thing. The Internet needs mothering, too. Or better, we will each sign up to mother/not accidentally kill your child for one day in exchange for you staying.
Every pregnancy, I alphabetize my spices. BECAUSE THE BABY CARES!
Also, god bless that saint of a woman. I can’t wait for your birth story.
Also, I really resisted an obnoxious treatise on your due date in reference to my birthday, because I know everyone does that. But I really want a medal.
Also, has anyone made references to you birthing our Lord and Savior? Because, just let me be the first to start calling your baby the Christ Child.
She has already stated that it will be the Kwisatz Haderach, which seems much more likely.
Right, but if the baby is born on Dec 25. I’m making some graven images.
What really happens if your baby is born on Dec. 25 is that they get one “oh, this is for Christmas AND your birthday!” gift from people for the rest of their lives.
I’m going to say that’s only true if they are shitty. My not-the-25th-but-close birthday has generally resulted in more people remembering and doing specific things for me for my birthday!
Yeah, I really love my Christmas time birthday. I always thought I was the reason for the season. And it’s clear Nicole’s child will be the reason for this season and all seasons.
Jenseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen. Pretty sure I, not having been previously pregnant, am now spontaneously pregnant. <3
That app that counts down to your due date by seconds looks like my version of helllll. What monster invented this thing?
On nesting: At 25 weeks, I have patched a bunch of nail holes in the living room that have been there since we moved in three years ago. Baby No. 2’s room still looks like a junk pile and mostly harbors an extra-large dog crate and a kitchen table that no one on Craigslist wants, but those nail holes are patched, dammit.
Final thought: With the exception of close friends and family, I do not believe I have ever been as excited to read a birth story as I am to read Nicole’s. Thanks, anonymous donor.
I know it’s supposed to be a baby bump but it looks like the diagrams of skin and acne that I obsessed over when I was an Incredibly Spotty Teen (TM).
Nesting is real. My cookbooks were reshelved by the Dewey decimal system;my daughter turned out to be very neat and orderly. Obviously it made a difference.
Nicole, we will miss you! Looking forward to what I hope is a very calm and unexciting birth story.
The Dewey decimal system??? Dammmmnnnnn…that is seriously impressive!
I’m voting for a 12/21 baby myself. Birthday twins! Also, a cusp baby! He can choose which horoscope he likes better!
(Side note: which app is that?)
(Second side note: I am entering week 27 on Thursday and am only *now* thinking that maybe I should do some exercise sometime soon, so for that alone, I salute the Hell out of you.)
Yes! I was born on an astrological cusp and it is the best thing about my birthday!* I mean no one feels like being a Virgo *all* the time.
*Besides the fact that it’s also my older brother’s birthday which means he had the saddest 3rd birthday ever, slash I have been tormenting him literally since birth.
I was born on a cusp and I am very attached to one of the signs (despite not actually believing in astrology) and in the rare event that people say “Oh, you’re a Sagittarius?” I get more upset than a rational person would (although not as upset as I get in the rare event that people put me in the wrong Hogwarts house). I’M A SCORRPIO AND A RAVENCLAW, DAMN IT.
Ha, the one bad thing about being on an astrological cusp is I feel entitled to being on a cusp for everything. I’m a Leo/Virgo IN[T/F]P Ravenpuff, tyvm.
I actually am on a cusp for Hogwarts houses – the Pottermore sorting hat put me in Slytherin, and all other sorting quizzes I’ve taken put me in either Slytherin or Ravenclaw. But one of the key messages of that series was that it is our choices who define who we are. So just as Harry chose to be in Gryffindor do I choose to be in Ravenclaw.
We have the same birthday! But I am Sagittarius.
My son is a cusp kid, but I refuse to acknowledge that we have some kind of Aquarian in this house. He is a good Capricorn earth sign, just like his good Virgo earth sign parents.
I don’t know what’s going to happen with this Gemini new one, though.
Nicole, don’t forget to stuff tissue paper into the baby booties!
My nesting instincts were thrown a huge curveball when my partner decided to reorganize a room without consulting me. The initial chaos and mess caused me to stop in my tracks and start crying. NESTING.
NESTING. At 35 weeks we erected a ten foot wide, three-bookcases-across monstrosity to reorganize the older two kids’ toys so the two of them would fit in one room. Then I realized the paint on the inside back was peeling, so we had to take it down, tear off the offending beadboard, find a new backing, prime and repaint it so it would adhere better (yes of course I did the painting both times), then reattach and re-erect the whole thing. It was over 200 pounds and my enormously tall husband and I barely got it off the ground. I am shocked my water didn’t break.
How is it working out now?
It is the best bookcase to ever case books. And/or toys. Closed storage! CLOSED STORAGE! http://tinyurl.com/kpnrdfv
I sympathize with your tears. Someone reorganizing my house for me is like someone reorganizing my limbs for me.
Aww, is that nesting after all? I was expected a big burst of energy not a continuation of my ordinary obsessive planning for contingencies. (Two kids, never got the big burst of energy, oh no indeed.)
Best wishes!
My favourite nesting story is the time my sister found herself standing on the kitchen table scrubbing the ceiling while almost 8 months pregnant.
I went to visit a friend when she was about that far along and she was mopping the walls with some kind of swiffer-like device. I guess it is a not-uncommon thing!
1) OMG your due date is creeping so near! I know so many people having December babies this year, it’s going to be the most wonderful baby-related time of the year in addition to all the warm fuzzies the holidays bring!
2) What app is that? I would like to know for… reasons…
I always wondered why I didn’t experience nesting in the sense that I had to clean things, and figured it was because I was induced. But this article made me realize that sewing a bunch of tunics and handbags and pillow covers and cloth napkins (because the baby cares, of course!) WAS my own cleaning-averse form of nesting.
Also, Nicole–Congratulations! I’ll miss your writing and can’t wait until you come back!
So one of my neighbors was building them a HOUSE during his wife’s pregnancy, so her nesting urges were severely thwarted, because like, there weren’t floors. But man, their landscaping was IMMACULATE.
It sounds like he was sympathy nesting.
Nesting is very real. Just ask Mr. Pietra. I tried to install a diaper sprayer on the guest bathroom toilet at about 37 weeks. For reference: due to a poor interior planning decision on the part of the builder, there’s about 9 inches of clearance between a room divider and the toilet. I am still not sure how I managed to get me and the bump back there.
Cut to: me plaintively asking him for “just a little help with something” with a puddle of water on the bathroom floor. He only laughed at me for… well, actually, he’s still laughing at me about it.
I didn’t know there was such a thing as a “diaper sprayer.” I…don’t think I want to know.
It is a godsend if you are going the cloth diaper route.
As far as workouts go, I only made it to week 30 before I quit lifting, so I salute you madam.
NICOLE! You are amazing. Can’t wait to hear how your hard work on strong muscles, better flexibility, endorphin production etc eases the birth (b/c you know it will).
My ultimate nesting story was buying a house and scheduling moving day 2 weeks before my due date. Because everything was going to be neatly wrapped up and perfect by birth day! Guess which second child came exactly two weeks early? So yeah moving into a new house and bringing a newborn home from the hospital while dealing with a toddler whose world had just utterly shifted on its axis. Nothing phases me now for ever and ever.
Eagerly awaiting your story and in denial that you will be gone and leaving that Nicole-shaped hole. Sob.
Ahhhhhh my parents moved from a basement apartment in town to a doublewide on 20 acres on top of a giant forested hill when I was two weeks old. This is the extent of my knowledge of the event, presumably because it was too traumatic to discuss in detail ever again.
I am so glad you told us your maternity leave plans! I want you to have good maternity leave and quality baby time, but I want to read the things that you write, and I couldn’t think of a way to ask about it that didn’t sound jerky or entitled. So yay! Communication magically happened!
This is a nesting story and also a hormone story:
A woman I know likes frogs, She has some hand towels with frogs on them, and to see the frogs you have to put the towel back on the holder the right way round. Once, after she had gone on mat. leave, her husband put the towel back the wrong way round, hiding her frogs. She cried from when she discovered the misfolded towels (about 10am) to when he got home from work (at about 6).
She is not normally like that.
When I was about 7 months pregnant last winter, I got home from a 12 hour shift at work with a 12 hour headache and sat on the bed and started sobbing because I wasn’t already wearing my pyjamas. Pregnancy hormones are a trip.
I am feeling thoroughly ashamed of myself for baaaasically giving up at around week 10 and never going back. Good for you making it this far and being a total fucking badass about it! I can’t wait to read the birth story, hopefully it’s totally uneventful. <3
Babies are sticklers when it comes to library science. Also linen closet organization, and pot and pan storage.This is well known
I can’t wait to read your first Feel the Burn after giving birth. After two kids, my abs are absolute shit and I can’t do a single situp, but my squats and lunges are INSANE.
Three things, only two of which are about me:
1) Nicole, you are a monster and I am in awe of you.
2) I am either naturally defective at nesting or my failure to go beyond 37 weeks with either of my kids means I would have been the BEST NESTER just as soon as I’d reached 38 weeks. Alas, not to be and my tiny girl child now sleeps in a room filled with laundry baskets, boxes of clothes to be sorted, and a giant cardboard rocket ship that needs to be donated to my son’s old daycare.
3) I am sadder than ever that Twitter has forever banned me from following Nicole. What the what, Twitter?
Three things, only two of which are about me:
1) Nicole, you are a monster and I am in awe of you.
2) I am either naturally defective at nesting or my failure to go beyond 37 weeks with either of my kids means I would have been the BEST NESTER just as soon as I'd reached 38 weeks. Alas, not to be and my tiny girl child now sleeps in a room filled with laundry baskets, boxes of clothes to be sorted, and a giant cardboard rocket ship that needs to be donated to my son's old daycare.
3) I am sadder than ever that Twitter has forever banned me from following Nicole. What the what, Twitter?
I didn't know there was such a thing as a "diaper sprayer." I…don't think I want to know.
Had a checkup scheduled at 40 weeks and drove the hour drive each way stomach pushing against the steering wheel saying to myself, "This is dumb. I do not need a checkup, I am going to have a baby very, very soon." 24 hours later I went into labor. There is something about those last few hours…
Hang in there, Nicole. Hope everything goes well.
But…the link roundup….Mallory…..I’m sure it will be fine, but…..ARGLEBARGLEBARGLE.
Aw, I truly hope you have a safe and happy maternity leave and a joyous holiday time!
All of these nesting stories are impressive. Most impressive. I nested some at the end but didn’t get much done as by that time I was sleeping like 20 hours a day. The fact that Nicole just now quit doing push-ups and squats and such just proves she’s a goddess living among us.
Kind of hoping Little Cliffe is born on Dec. 18, as it is an auspicious day for birthing (Bittysweet’s birthday).
All of these nesting stories are impressive. Most impressive. I nested some at the end but didn't get much done as by that time I was sleeping like 20 hours a day. The fact that Nicole just now quit doing push-ups and squats and such just proves she's a goddess living among us.
Kind of hoping Little Cliffe is born on Dec. 18, as it is an auspicious day for birthing (Bittysweet's birthday).
This is probably going to sound awful but I want to understand and I swear I am coming from a place of honest questioning as someone who will likely be pregnant for the first time in the next year or so: Everything that I have heard/seen from friends about pregnancy and childbirth is 100% horrifying. As someone who’s already done the whole thing once, what about it made you go “yeah, I could do that again?”
This is probably going to sound awful but I want to understand and I swear I am coming from a place of honest questioning as someone who will likely be pregnant for the first time in the next year or so: Everything that I have heard/seen from friends about pregnancy and childbirth is 100% horrifying. As someone who's already done the whole thing once, what about it made you go "yeah, I could do that again?"