So, how are you feeling?

Every time I talk to anyone whom I haven't seen in a while (a.k.a. everyone) they ask me how I'm feeling. Tomorrow, I'll be 29 weeks pregnant, firmly rooted in the dreaded third trimester. The answer to the question is: Overall, I feel pretty good. Some things about this pregnancy compare very favorably to when I was pregnant with Lillian. Including:

1. I remember having awful backaches with #1. My lower back and right inbetween my shoulders burned with achy painfulness. I can remember asking Tyler to push as hard as he could on my lower back to try to ease the pain. This time, nothing. My body gets tired from carrying around an all-of-a-sudden 25 lb weight gain, but not really achy. I suppose it's because my trunk muscles have been strengthened by hauling Lillian around for two years.
2. No breathing problems (except the one to be mentioned hereafter). I never had breathing problems until I moved to San Luis Obispo, and then after I got pregnant, my lungs took a complete vacation from any and all responsible behavior. I had to go on steroids and use my inhaler all the time. Probably, if we still lived in SLO, this would be the case, but now that we live in the middle of a desert, I haven't any trouble breathing.

Otherwise, things are improving from earlier in the pregnancy: I'm not so exhausted and I'm not throwing up (as much).

The one thing that is worse than the last time (other than the few extra weeks of morning sickness) is the crazy insane Braxton Hicks contractions. I vaguely remember these but I don't remember them as anything other than a 'huh, there's another one' sensation. Now, they knock the wind out of me and I have to stop what I'm doing and focus on breathing through it. And, although I didn't keep an official total, I'm pretty sure I had five thousand today.

People around town, like at the post office today, ask me when the baby is due and I say December and they say things like, "so, not too much longer." I think, 'are you kidding me?! Since when is 77 days not too much longer?' But I don't say that, I just say, "yup, pretty soon."