For the past couple of weeks, I have developed a rather annoying and painful side-effect of pregnancy: ye olde pinched sciatic nerve. Well, I assume it’s the sciatic, but it could be some other nerve.

I’ll be sitting for awhile, say at work, and then when I stand up and start walking to the printer or the accounting department or to Nick’s office, I suddenly feel pain shooting through my backside, sometimes so badly that the leg on the affected side wobbles and loses half of its strength. Hence the limping. I scared one girl here at work one day when I walked by muttering “Ouch, ouch, ouch” under my breath. She looked up at me with wide eyes, wondering if I was in labour. I guess it’s not so good for a pregnant woman to walk by making sounds of pain.

Anyway, it’s a real pain in the ass - both figuratively and literally. For some reason, it seems to be worse here at work than it is at home, although I do experience it pretty much every morning when I get out of bed. But otherwise, I’m generally able to walk around the house without too much pain. Also, I went to the gym last night and walked on the treadmill for close to half-an-hour, and didn’t suddenly start limping. So that then makes me wonder: are the shoes I’m wearing at work making it worse? I switch between two pairs at the moment, and both are pretty well flat. At home, I wear slippers or go barefoot. At the gym, I was wearing running shoes. If it gets really bad, I may have to approach our office manager to see if an exception to our dress code can be made for me so that I can wear running shoes. Not that I really want to since I do still have some dignity and wearing sneakers with dress pants is a bit of a faux-pas unless it’s because you’re taking public transport into work and will change into proper shoes once you get there, or you’re going for a brisk walk at lunch.

Then again, I imagine that the pain of a pinched nerve is eating away at my dignity anyway.

I am, for the most part, still sleeping relatively well. Most nights I wake up 2-3 times to go pee which is annoying, but I’m very fortunate in being able to fall right back to sleep once I get back into bed. A couple of nights ago was not fun in that I woke up with a combination of really needing to pee AND having one hell of a contraction. Most of the contractions I feel (which is on a near-daily basis these days) are of the tightening variety which is uncomfortable but not painful. But every so often… Well, the fact that the painful contraction was part of the reason I woke up out of a deep slumber stayed with me for most of yesterday, not helped by the fact that I was experiencing some cramping-like contractions in the morning, making me wonder if I was at the very beginning of what would turn into full-fledged labour.

Thankfully, that was not the case. Everything calmed down and so far today, I don’t think I’ve had a single contraction. Although yes, I am very anxious to meet Baby Guthrie, and although yes I’m at that stage where doctors wouldn’t attempt to stop labour if it started, I would prefer that she at least wait another two weeks when I will be at 37 weeks. I’ve basically broken the month of March down into increments of events I’m looking forward to: getting to 37 weeks at which point I may just go for a walk every single day and eat only spicy food in an attempt to bring on labour (I’m kidding. I think.), and the following week which will be my last before starting maternity leave (assuming that my attempts the week before don’t work).

So far, two people have proposed March 28th as the date on which Baby Guthrie will be born. My father-in-law had a dream over Christmas to that effect, and Sherry mentioned that Breanna also picked that day. I guess we’ll see!