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Week 18 of Pregnancy

“Arrrgh, son-of-a-bitch leg cramp!” is something you may have uttered recently. Most likely it was when you were in bed after finally getting to sleep once your heartburn subsided and your nose cleared.

No one knows what causes them (yet there was a study to see if rats could tell the difference between Japanese and Dutch. They can but not when spoken backwards.  Thanks, science you suck today.) The possible culprits are compressed blood vessels or just the pressure of carrying around more weight. Either way, they are painful and wrench you out of a glorious sleep like an air horn. Quickest trick to relieve them is to flex your foot upwards and straighten your leg like you’re going to touch your shin with your big toe.

As for your baby, they are yawning and hiccupping now. Awwww. Don’t the leg cramps seem less shitty now? No, you’re right they’re still terrible.

Your baby is moving around quite a bit now, and you can see all its blood vessels through its transparent skin. So cool.

You may be feeling a little “thick” and decide that you need to step up the exercise (and some of you just laughed at that). Even though every pregnancy site and book weaves the importance of exercise and eight glasses of water into every ailment, but keep in mind that this isn’t the time to train for a marathon if you’ve been sitting on the couch for the past decade. Start slow and ease into it – this also isn’t the time to fire yourself off a treadmill at the gym – that shit will end up on Youtube.

However, if you are cut like a diamond and want to continue to work out, there’s really no reason you should stop even though at some point our society decided that you should only participate in water aerobics and giggling in the corner while you’re a vessel of life.

Here’s the exercise post if you wanted to find out a few more details.