Meeting Goals

   We are still moving very slow at this point in the surrogacy. We are still negotiating contracts. It is quite obvious that I should not be a lawyer. My thought is it should very simply say "don't be a dumb shit and only do what is best for the baby". Unfortunately, that is not the case. Every topic under the sun is covered. Some very specific, some quite vague. Like exercise, "no strenuous exercise", well what is considered strenuous?? The answer I got was basically that I had to pin the Dr.s down to specifically what I can and cannot do. There are a lot of food restrictions as well, luckily non of them are things I eat anyway! I have found this to be an area where the different cultures are evident. There is a lot of mention of unpasteurized stuff, I don't even know where to get anything unpasteurized, plus it sounds pretty gross! I also found out that deli meat is quite unhealthy for pregnant women. That was not something that was known when I was pregnant the last time. It is a little scary to think of all of the potential risks that are still unknown. Luckily I am pretty cautious during pregnancy. I limit caffeine, which is MAJOR for me, plus I rarely take any medication. Including my allergy meds, I will suffer with the allergies the whole time. It does appear that my allergy shots will be ok, which help a lot.
     I have found that there were a few things that I wish someone would have told me about before this point. Not that it would have changed my mind, I just would have been prepared. There were a few sections that had me literally saying " what the hell? That's crazy!" One of those were travel restrictions. I know that late in pregnancy there are flight restrictions and I was always told that if you were going more than 2 hours you had to stop and move around. This contract says after only 24 weeks (that is 16 weeks, or 4 months to go) I cannot travel more than 50 miles from the hospital. That kind of makes me feel like I am going to be stuck in a VERY small box for almost half of the pregnancy. My favorite place in the world, the beach, is 150 miles away :( If there was some reason that I needed to go get my step kids, I could not, they are over 75 miles away, even hiking at Lassen Park is out of the question. I could barely go as far south as Red Bluff! The reality is that by the time I am 6 months it will quite likely be winter and I wouldn't go many of those places anyway but the fact that I CANNOT go makes me panic a little. There just is not a lot within 50 miles of Redding! I am asking for 100, which will give me slightly more freedom. but not enough to make it to the beach :( I am not sure why this restriction has hit me so hard. I guess it is probably that I am so active that it is difficult to think that for 4 months I will be very limited as to what I can do. It is not a deal breaker, if I have to agree to the 50 miles, I will, but it will be very disappointing. I would never do anything that is a danger to the baby, but I also like to know that I can get away if I want to!

     Ok, enough whining! On the the goal I met. I ran my first 5K! It was awesome! My mom, Kaylee and I ran (most of it anyway) and Kimberly and Dallys walked. It was called a Gnarly Neon. What that means is you come to the run in white, then throughout the course there are people who shower you with a powder dye! It was so much fun! I tried to track the run on mapmyrun but for some reason it did not save, I guess I really did not need to know the time. It was so much fun that I have already pre-registered for another color run in October, although depending on what my OB classifies as strenuous, I may only be able to walk that one. I would also like to eventually run a timed race. BUT I know that I am not the best sport, so I cannot do that until I know that I can get a decent time, so most likely that will be after the baby is born. It still is a shock to me that I run for fun. A year ago I would have totally laughed if you told me that I would voluntarily sign up to run 3 miles. Now, I am still a little disappointed in myself because I think that after running pretty regularly for 8 months I should be faster and be able to run farther without stopping. I will continue to push myself to do better until the doctors tell me to stop. I do plan on being active throughout the pregnancy though, but maybe not running! I have attacked a few pictures of our run for you to see all of the fun!