Pregnancy Part 7

Today is 15 weeks. I am feeling happy and hungry. Despite eating lots over the weekend, I did not gain a significant amount of weight. It is so easy to get stressed about eating too much, not eating enough, and whether I'm eating the "right stuff."

I am pretty much hungry all the time now. I am a bit concerned because I looked at my lab results from my first trimester screenings and although everything looks good with the baby, it seems like some of my levels are elevated, which points to a UTI. Of course, when I called my doctor's office this morning I found out that she hasn't looked at the results yet because she was on vacation last week. I'm not so upset about her taking vacation, but I hope I will get a call back today with some advice about whether this is something to be alarmed about or just nothing.

I made the appointment to speak with Human Resources at my school to get all the information and paperwork for my leave of absence in the spring. I informed my boss that I will not be teaching. It is all starting to get pretty real.

We ended up taking a spontaneous trip to Santa Ana over the weekend. We left school at 3pm and sat in traffic for 3 hours on the I-5 freeway. We listened to the Practical Entrepreneur podcast and This American Life podcast. We snacked on fruit and energy bars. We drank lots of water. It was actually pretty relaxing for me at least. We arrived at our hotel around 6pm, dropped off our little doggie, picked up McDonald's drive-through, and went straight to the football game at Newport Harbor High School. The game was a blow-out. Corona del Mar scored 55 points against Lakewood who scored 7. It was still fun to sit with family and greet my nephew out on the field after the game.

We got back to the hotel around 10pm, ate a bit of snacks and went to sleep. We both slept so well, we decided to book another night! It was so relaxing. I had the continental breakfast at 7am, then went back to sleep for a bit. We woke up at 9am and went to meet family for brunch at Coco's in Anaheim. We went back to the hotel, watched a couple of episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians and then the movie Devil Wears Prada on the E! network.

My sister called and it was great to have a long chat with her. We had dinner at the Stonefire Grill and then went for a long walk on the beach. We got back to the hotel in time for dear husband to have a dip in the jacuzzi while I watched a couple episodes of Midsomer Murders on PBS.

Corona del Mar Main Beach

The next morning, we had continental breakfast together around 8am. Then we took Edna Jo for a long dog walk around Santa Ana. There were lots of other dogs and people to say hello to. When we got back to the hotel, we packed up and got on the road home by 10am. Traffic was nice and we were home within 1 hour. We did some grocery shopping and then took naps. A couple loads of laundry and some garlic-butter chicken later, we went to bed around 9pm.

It was great to get away, but we have some plans for next weekend. We plan to do some house-cleaning (bathrooms, vacuuming, etc.). A good thing about getting away is that you come home to see how your house looks compared with a professionally-maintained hotel room. Let's just say that our whites could be brighter. I'm glad fall is coming, I am getting done with this heat. I did sleep with the windows open last night and it was glorious.

The things I was missing on the trip were: flip-flops, shorts, headphones/earplugs, swimsuit and sunscreen. We've perfected our packing routine to the bare minimum from our bicycle travels, but now that we're driving, there's no reason not to bring a few more comfort items. Also, it would have been good to have two sets of utensils. I ended up eating leftover mac & cheese with my hands and then the next morning Mike cut his mouth on the crappy plastic spoons in the breakfast area. There's no reason why we can't bring our own silverware.