Pregnant Road Trip Part 1

              What to do in the summer?  There are many things we like to enjoy; camping, road trips, weddings, etc.  It so happens that this summer all the things we wanted to do ended up in a 2 week overlapping time period.  It was very fun and I was excited for all parts of our trip, however I was wondering how pregnancy would make this different from normal.  Turns out it was not that much different but there were definitely some things that made it more challenging.

                The first part of our journey was the annual camping trip with my family to Sylvan Lake.  We got there Sunday July, 10 and set-up camp.  Now the great part about being pregnant is that I am not allowed to carry anything too heavy or do anything too strenuous.  My job mostly consisted of sitting and watching (with only a little giggling at the madness that comes with setting up a tent), although, I did set up the bed.  Rob and I have a nice Coleman double mattress, which helped to make sleeping a little more comfortable.  However, I did notice that sleeping on an air mattress while pregnant does have some draw backs that it did not before.  The one thing that I noticed the most is that my hips hurt, it actually woke me up in the middle of the night.  So, overall, I decided that I will forgo sleeping on air mattresses while I am pregnant in the future.  Unfortunately, for this trip I have a week and a half of air mattress sleeping in me.  Making sure the mattress was really full did help to make it more comfortable.

                Camping was pretty low key this year; there were some of our regular camping activities that I could not take part in this year.  Caving was one of them, although the caves were closed so no one else got to go.  We also had a 3 mile hike, which leads to a very beautiful lake.  My mom and I went on the hike but only went for the 1^st mile.  The last mile of the hike is VERY steep, and I didn’t want to push myself too hard.  Mom and I took our time walking back down the mile to the car and then we brought books so that we could read while Dad, Jeff, Jenna, Shannon, and Blaine finished the rest of the hike.  It was the best exercise I got on the trip and it was fun for the dogs, Bunker and Fiji as well.  Mom, Dad and I also went on a little walk around the lake so we could let the pups have a little swim.  Wearing tennis shoes and walking on a relatively flat trail I managed to roll my ankle.  Luckily the fall was not too intense, with definitely no harm to the baby.  My ankle is still a little swollen, but it only hurt bad for about 2 days.  There were no more hikes for me after that.  Let’s hope I will have better balance the rest of my pregnancy!

~Ali