Well what a week! Spoiler: I have a pregnancy hormone story to share so stick with me!
Firstly, we're officially at term as of today as my "week" changes on a Sunday. That means Baby J is, in theory, fully cooked and biologically ready and able to emerge at any point in the coming weeks. Realistically, given how much he's still moving around and given I haven't "dropped" fully we're not yet looking to pack a hospital bag but hitting the 37 week mark feels, once again, like rounding the corner to see the finish line at the end of a marathon (ok so I actually haven't run a marathon so don't actually know what that feels like but I imagine it feels the same).
Secondly, this week my main task was selling as much equipment from the studio as possible. This meant my main activity for the week was moving equipment into various piles ready for collection, keeping the studio as neat and tidy as possible as I still had to train clients in it, and occasionally moving equipment from point A to point B. If anyone was walking down Hollywood Road at about 2pm on Monday they would have seen me and Steph pushing a trolley of 110kg of dumbbells down the road then up Graham St, probably an interesting sight to behold. Similarly, if you were walking through Lan Kwai Fong at 11am on Friday you would have seen a pregnant lady laughing whilst chasing 10 cans of Noccos that had liberated themselves from the trolley I was pushing. Luckily I was bringing them to the garbage dump anyway but in an ideal world I would have pushed them there, not chased them there.
Emptying the studio was both cathartic and bittersweet. It's been a second home for 5 years, it's the place I grew 2 humans and raised 1 of them. It was a quiet refuge in the middle of the chaos of Central. It's the place many people came through to heal, to grow, to get strong, and to start anew. Of course we'll continue to work our magic and provide a safe haven in the new location too and the merger with The Gym is, honestly, a fantastic move but leaving your first home is always bittersweet!
We rounded off a chaotic week with a weekend of hosting: first at home (Baby Sprinkle) then at the studio (Farewell party). So a busy week ended with a busy weekend - next week will be slightly more relaxing but I think I'll need to actively find time to be still to reset and ground myself again.
Training
I managed 1 strength session and 2 yoga sessions this week but most of the week's activity was simply moving equipment which was plenty of activity. Some examples of some of the piles of equipment I had to bring together:
Pile A: 3x 20kg barbells, 1x 15kg barbell, 2x farmers carry bars, 6x 10kg plates, 2x 5kg plates, 2x 27.5kg dumbbells.
Pile B: 4x 25kg plates, 4x 20kg plates, 2x 15kg plates
Pile C: 2 of each: 20kg, 17.5kg, 15kg, 12.5kg dumbbells
Pile D: Sled, EZ bar, 15kg barbell, 3 plyo boxes, 8 foam rollers
Separately that's not a lot of equipment and not a lot to do but compounded with smaller piles and also then consolidating and tidying the remaining equipment meant that on a daily basis Baby J and I were shifting many hundreds of kg of weight around. No wonder by Friday my body was in "game over" mode.
Life in General
Pregnancy hormone story time! So, the week was long but I find joy in being organised in chaos so it was fun mentally despite being tiring physically. I'd spent most of the week in the studio which meant Noah (who is still on summer holiday) spent a lot of her week alone (all her friends are at school already). This meant Noah was bored and a bored kid, with time, becomes an emotional kid. By the end of the week her emotions were running high and she wasn't cooperative. I received a very teary Facetime on Friday as I was leaving the studio so my original plan of meeting Noah at Ocean Park turned into a "I must go home to pick up the crying child who won't go anywhere unless I take her". An emotional child is also not the most polite child so I took Noah to Ocean Park alone instead of with my mum who had been unceremoniously uninvited by an emotional 2 year old. In immediate hindsight I should have handled this situation better as an exhausted adult taking an emotional child to Ocean Park was never a great recipe for success but in the heat of the moment my only thought was just to get going. Fast forward 90min and we're having a blast. The aquarium and pandas and goldfish and other random animals are always a huge hit. Yes, a tired mum is chasing a toddler in a chaotic environment but the toddler is thriving and loving it and there's honestly nothing more heartwarming than watching your kid have a blast. After an initial round of animal watching Noah, for the first time ever, announced she wanted to go on the kids rides. So off we went! We stood in line for the very tiny Ferris Wheel only to be told at the front that I'm not allowed on due to my "condition". Garbage. The minibus ride from Causeway Bay to Stanley is more dangerous. We then tried the carousel where I was met with the same rejection, I tried to argue my case for sitting on the sled (ie the part of the carousel that does not move up and down) which is where the wheelchairs also sit. Denied.
Obviously I know this is a very sane and rational policy for an amusement park to have. I felt a bit stupid for not thinking about this ahead of time but at this stage many things in my head come to surface. I've been sweating since Monday 7am, I'm tired, I'm very hot, I have a 2 year old who thinks she's the one who keeps being told she can't go on rides and is getting upset, in my head I've ruined the day and I then make a mountain out of a molehill. Which, in pregnancy, means I just stood in the middle of the kids section of Ocean Park and cried...All the while recognising how ridiculous my crying is but unable to do anything about it. I had to take my sunglasses out to hide my tears so I didn't have to explain to a 2 year old that mum was just being a bit silly...
As most mum's do, I immediately went into problem solving mode though and my solution? I took Noah on the one ride I was allowed on (a very pathetic train car ride) and then sold the cable cars as a ride. We were not a huge fan of the train but the cable car was the most exciting thing on the planet. On the other side we spent a LONG time admiring the sharks and all of a sudden the world was right again. We ended the day with pizzas at Repulse Bay beach so in Noah's mind, she had a perfect end to the day: mum came home, mum spent time doing something fun with me, and I got pizza.
Pregnancy hormones really get you in the weirdest places.
Other than this little fun episode, I do think Baby J has dropped slightly. Breathing is a bit easier and I feel slightly more pressure in my hips, not uncomfortably, just noticeably a bit heavier a bit lower down. This is a good thing but I definitely could drop a little further. Over the next few weeks I imagine I'll go back to googling "labour signs" like I did last time which is the most useless thing you could possibly do but somehow makes you feel a bit better.
Thursday is my last day of work and Friday is Noah's first full day of big kid school. Big week ahead so with that I'm going to leave you and go back to being with the land of the 3D people!
Speak to you next week!
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