Pregnancy and Climbing

Ryan and I decided to escape the Covid filled world and go on a Western Sierra Dome Climbing tour.  Day 1: 5/23/2020 Tollhouse Rock  We decided to give pregnant multi-pitch climbing a try beginning with Tollhouse Traverse. A 4 pitch 5.5 climb. It took us no time at all and we basically ran up it. 2.5hrs car to car. That's when we knew it wasn't impossible and we could continue safely on this adventure. Being 27 weeks pregnant it was unclear how much I could do but we knew I wanted to try. I wanted so bad to move my body and keep active, specifically keep climbing. If you can't snowboard you gotta climb in my world. We left Tollhouse to bivy at Fresno Dome which was the next days objective.  Day 2: 5/24/2020 Fresno Dome We woke up in the morning and made coffee with a big breakfast. Waiting on our friends Dylan and Nina with no cell service and just a bit of hope they'd find our camp we ate and listened to music. Soon they arrived and we finished our morning to hike out ...

Today was a more mellow day because I was still sore from climbing 2 days ago. One must listen to their body even more so now. We wandered to the crag and I let my fiance climb a bunch before trying anything. My subject; a 5.9 finger crack called Dinkum. I'm so glad the crux wasn't the start of the climb today. Got through the easier hand crack to a nice rest then wrestled the finger crack. While I didn't get it clean, I still got up it eventually thanks to the top rope. I lowered back to the good stance to have another (and what I hoped to be a clean) go. But, I was worked. This whole pregnancy thing feels like a workout already and pushing myself overboard is not the answer. Learning to say enough and try again another day.

Day 1 of going outdoor climbing while pregnant. ✔  Well, I'm 21 weeks and 6 days today, April 1st! No April fools. I climbed a crack and I climbed it 3 times. It was hard, it was rewarding, it made my whole body shake and I cried. But, I did it. At no point was I not having fun. Did I get frustrated? Hell yeah, it's a whole different beast trying to lug yourself up a crack being 10lbs heavier with a growing belly and boobs the size of watermelons. Come to find out its graded at 5.8 so wasn't as easy as we thought it was. Some say it could even be 5.9 (probably at the crux which was at the start) but I am crap at judging grades. I was saying that's probably like a 5.6 crack with a 5.7 crux and I'd be running up it no problem if I wasn't pregnant. But you know, I need to give myself some credit. Yeah, maybe I haven't been climbing every day like I did before winter but we did go to the climbing gym a few times and I was getting up the 5.8/5.9s fairly ea...

So far my favorite things about being pregnant are; Eating whatever I want. I mean I eat healthy and snack healthy but I'll also indulge in a mammoth sized bowl of ice cream with a banana and chocolate syrup and not even feel ashamed about it. I also will eat an entire sharing size bag of peanut m&ms because they don't have peanut butter ones in Japan but that's only on occasion to. Don't judge me. I may have eaten my weight in pizza tonight to but you can't tell me you don't have cheat days when you're on that (insert new diet fad here) diet. Feeling the baby move. It's the most bizarre thing but also the coolest thing in the world. Baby sits quite low right now and so therefore it feels like they're playing bongos on my bladder but hey, I know they're in there living their best life. Can't argue with that.  Watching my body change. You might think that's crazy because who wants to gain weight and feel huge as some women feel wh...

I'm going to start this blog by saying that I am pregnant, living in Japan as the title suggests. I have spent the first half of my pregnancy here. Been having appointments with a Japanese doctor and not once has he even mentioned COVID-19. The state I am in supposedly has the most cases in all of Japan and while none that we know of are in the city we are in, the schools and public spaces are closed here, yet not even my doctor is mentioning the virus or worried about us traveling in Japan and home? So no, I am not worried about it or worried about getting it. Am I taking precautions? Yes. I wash my hands regularly, I eat healthy, I take supplements and I stay home if I'm not feeling 100%. Which only happened twice this entire winter with having a fever only once. I'm more worried about the things in the long story I am about to tell. January - February I've been working in the snow sports industry for 14 years.  Every year it's the same, you get travele...

Hey internet, Its me again, the first time mom who goes on hormonal rants. When you become pregnant there's so many things that start happening that they don't warn you about. Breast pain is the most horrible one, then if you're one of the lucky ones you get to feel nauseous all day and vomit which for most stops around the second trimester. Not the case with me. I decided to eat a burger and fries for lunch and boy was that a mistake. Hello heartburn, I never knew what you were until pregnancy, let alone how to make you less miserable of a symptom. Man does it hurt. Why in the world do we not learn this in school or why is it not offered as a class in college at least?  The biggest thing I notice is I'm not alone in this. Most women have absolutely no clue what is happening or why so what do we do? We go on the internet. Do you know how hard it is to know if your information is coming from a credible source or if there's research to back it up? Yeah we have d...