Vacation Survived!

For vacation this year, we decided to fly to San Fransisco and rent an RV to travel north to Canada and back. That is for another blog, but I wanted to write about how things went with the pregnancy.

Turns out, the only times that I really had issues with my belly were when I was under stress. You may think that it wouldn't happen on vacation, but since we were traveling in such close corners with my inlaws, stress did happen to find me on many separate occasions. It is not to say that the trip was a total bust, but in reality, how can a trip be stress free with a woman who is 5 months pregnant??

I was very pleased with what I was able to do. Luckily, it was only hot on the last few days of our trip, so I wasn't miserable in that wayat all. Every place we stopped to check stuff out gave us an opportunity for a walk. Though Dennis and I love to hike, it just wasn't in the cards during this trip. I was worried about overdoing it and being so far away from my doctor. However, when I came home to my first doctor's visit, she told me that everything looked great...better than expected by her and me! I was thrilled. So what was it that I did on vacation that I didn't think I could do being so far along? Here are a few examples:

When we were in California, we visited the Avenue of the Giants. Many of these trips were just photo spots, but there was one, "the Founder's tree", that allowed us a bit of walking. This was my first test, and I had no issues. After that, we took a walk along the beach at Shelter Cove, which had a few stairs and some rather rocky sections. No issues again.

Two more times for walking were in Washington. The first was at the Hoh Rainforest, where we took a short hike around the beautiful scenery and saw lots of interesting plants and even some elk. The other time was when Dennis and I visited Forks, the home of the Twilight saga. We took the bus there a 7something in the AM and got to Forks from our KOA in Port Angeles around 9AM. We then walked up and down the main street to visit a closed visitor's center, have breakfast and then head to the shops for Twilight gear before the tour. The tour also allowed us to walk along the beach in La Push, which is a Native American Reservation. Afterwards, we walked to another store before walking back to the bus station. Overall, that was the most walking I had done during my entire pregnancy, and though I was tired, I didn't get cramps or issues. This was two big walking days in a row, and we added a third when we decided to spend the next day in Victoria, BC. I had never been to Canada before, so this was an exciting trip. However, I was exhausted and didn't really feel much for walking. We took a couple of sitdown breaks, but we mostly walked the whole day. It as a beautiful, sunny, but windy day. The town was just great. It would be nice to bring the boys back when they get older. Being pregnant made it a bit hard to have as much fun, since I was tired most of the time, but that didn't stop my eyes from seeing the sites.

Overall, I was very surprised by my body. Maybe it is just that it knows what to do since I have already been pregnant. Whatever the case, I was very glad that I could enjoy my vacation and not have any issues with my baby. He was my major concern the entire time. With the walking and lifting Andrew and the lack of rest, I am very happy to say that none of those things negatively affected my little guy. This is a good sign for the rest of the pregnancy.