Walk it out

This week officially marks the halfway point in my pregnancy. As you can guess, there has been much rejoicing around the Palmer household. Reaching the 20-week mark feels like a great personal accomplishment although, in truth, I’ve done nothing to reach this momentous occasion except not die.

Although time has marched on for the last five months, I have done no such thing. In fact, I have stayed as stationary as possible. As I have already shared, the extent of my walking for the first three months of my pregnancy was primarily from the bed to the couch to the bathroom. Then, a couple weeks ago, I began adding regular detours to the refrigerator into my itinerary. Instead of the extra trip to my kitchen slimming me down, as I supposed it should, it had the opposite effect: I can no longer see straight down to the floor. (Pregnancy is a strange phenomenon, indeed.)

As a result, last week I made a midway-through-my-pregnancy-resolution: I promised myself I would begin walking on a daily basis. And, let me tell you, it’s much harder than I remember. The two-mile loop up and down the hills of our apartment complex is neither technically nor experientially a “walk in the park.”

The morning after my first jaunt, I awoke with terrible pains in my quads and calves. Relocating to the couch seemed like a far superior option to donning my walking shoes, but I was determined not to let my pregnancy resolutions go the way of my New Year’s resolutions. So, out the door I went.

I have now kept up my daily walks for a week, and I look forward to them almost as much as does our lab puppy. While they hardly compare in intensity to the P90X routines I was accustomed to pre-pregnancy, I’m pretty sure that I’ll have killer legs by the time Baby Palmer arrives. Too bad by then I won’t be able to see them.