calibrateBUMPS: Cait's Week 20-21

Hi Calibrate Family!

This week it's back to being all about me and Fudge. She's growing well, as am I. Last week I posted a side-by-side bump growth/weight gain update just so you could all see the progress. I'm up 3.9kg from my starting weight 20 weeks ago and the doctor is more than fine with that. I think the most striking thing is the fact that the weight difference between week 16 and 20 is only 0.9kg but my shape is certainly very different! The weight slowly redistributed itself upwards and slightly outwards. It's only out from here!

Training

For my training during week 19-20 (which I didn't talk about) I actually took a long and much needed break. I think I needed some time post-depression to just relax and clear my head. I went back to what I know best and averaged just over 20,000 steps a day. I walked everywhere and anywhere. Sometimes completely aimlessly. It felt good to remove myself from the gym (except for my stretching) and just move a bit.

This week I went back to the gym.

Monday

I decided to slowly ease myself back into it given it'd been a long time since my last gym session and my lower back was acting up a bit. I figured now is not the time to beast myself back into it.

3 sets each:

A1. 10 Bodyweight Bulgarian Split Squats

A2. 6 Miniband Frontal Raise Pulses (to all my clients who love to hate me for this: See, I told you I do them too!)

A3. 15 Bear Crawl Hold Fire Hydrants

B1. 12 Sumo Goblet Squats

B2. 10 Half Kneeling Arnold Presses

B3. 15 Donkey Kick Backs

Tuesday

Used a 2 hour break in the morning rain to walk into work and listen to a podcast.

Later on in the afternoon I decided to head into the gym for a bit of an upper body push/pull.

3 sets each:

12 Incline Chest Presses

10 Single Arm Bent Over Rows

12 Kneeling Tricep Extensions

10 Kneeling Push Ups* (the full push up is starting to strain my abdomen a little bit)

12 Lat Pulldowns

8 Bird Dogs

20min stretch

Wednesday

Had grand plans in the morning of a nice 3 hour hike, I managed to swing a midweek day off! However, about 15min into my walk I started to feel quite lightheaded so I slowed right down, and I called it after an hour. Stayed inside in the aircon for the next few hours and took it easy the rest of the day.

Thursday

Feeling much better after a super early night I went back into the gym today. Following my upper body push/pull on Tuesday I opted for a lower body session today.

3 sets each

A1. 12 Single Leg Deadlifts

A2. 20 Standing Fire Hydrants

B1. 50m Narrow Stance Walking Lunges

B2. 50m Farmer's Carry @ 120% body weight

C1. 50m Prowler Sprints @ 50% body weight

C2. 3 Standing Hip CARS

Life in General

From the updates from week 19-20:

• I had a dream about a full breakfast buffet one night: yoghurt, fresh fruit, egg station, cereal...etc. It was incredible. I don't know whether that was a pregnancy induced dream or a COVID buffet-withdrawal induced one, either way, it was great.

• On Wednesday the 3rd I made the conscious decision to eat salmon again after a 3.5 year hiatus. I say "conscious" because when you travel within and around Asia and ask for "vegetarian" versions of food I'm 100% sure it's all cooked with fish stock, fish sauce, fish flakes, and all that. I'd been toying with starting to resume salmon consumption a few months back (before I found out I was pregnant) because I wanted to stop taking an omega-3 supplement and just eat salmon instead. I expected to have my first mouthful and feel like I was in heaven again, surprisingly that didn't happen. It obviously tasted great and my body tolerated it perfectly, but I didn't get a wave of salmon obsession. I don't know how long the stint with salmon will last but I'll be sure to continue to monitor my omega-3 intake!

• The anatomy exam! A lot of you have asked so I'll give you the brief run down. Fudge definitely takes after her mum, she wasn't very cooperative during the exam (she wanted to show us all the different directions she could face, none of which were very useful) however our OB-GYN is an absolute genius and still managed to complete the full exam in 24 minutes. She has all her bones and organs accounted for, nothing came up that was out of the ordinary. She's perfectly average size so all she has to do now is get longer and bigger.

Now that I'm in my second half of pregnancy, a lot of people have asked whether I've felt any kicks. I haven't but I'm not worried or concerned, and neither in the doctor. At our 20 week anatomical scan the doctor told me I have an anterior placenta so it will take me a little while longer to feel her kicks. We could see her kicking and swimming around during the scan though!

I've been doing a LOT of sleeping which is wonderful, I'm not tired during the day and don't find I'm lacking energy, but by 9:30pm it's definitely bed time for me. I averaged 10 hours of sleep a night last weekend!