Bubble Baths and Baby Clothes

Here it is - the most trivial post you will ever read.  The entire thing is about baths and laundry.  Enjoy.  :)

So it's been frequently suggested to me that I try taking a warm bath to cope with the pain I'm in.  To be honest, I've been completely ignoring that advice simply because I was too freaked out about getting the water temperature right.  All I'd been told is to take a "warm" bath, not a "hot" bath or I could hurt the baby. Okay, sorry, that's too vague for me.  So I wasn't going anywhere near the bath thing.

But at my last appointment my doctor suggested it again so I asked her for a temperature.  She said "Keep it under 120 degrees" with absolute certainty so I felt good about that answer.

Then on Saturday Aaron took me to WalMart to help me get out of the house and pick up some things we needed.  I rode around on the embarrassing little cart, but we had a good time (Except whenever I backed up, turns out the reverse beeping was very embarrassing to Aaron, haha.  And I tried not to notice that the only other people using the ride-on carts were old ladies...)  While we were there I grabbed a bunch of bubble bath stuff just in case I got up the nerve to test the waters (quite literally!).  :)

That night I was pretty stressed and hurting.  I had some additional spotting (very light but always scary - I kinda sorta spent last week testing my limits, sooo apparently I need to stop and accept that I really do have to be resting all the time) so between that and my WalMart excursion, I was not feeling well.  (The trip to the store wasn't as bad as putting things away when I got home - some habits are hard to break! But Aaron intervened about halfway through and sent me back to the couch, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been).  Anyway, I had decided to just go to bed, but then I remembered Daylight Savings!  I had an extra hour all of a sudden!

So there I was with clear instructions from my doctor, plenty of bubble bath supplies, needing to de-stress and relieve pain, and I had a free hour.  Clearly the planets had aligned and finally created the perfect opportunity for me to try out this bath business as a pregnant pain remedy - and who was I to fight fate??

So I ran the water and put all kinds of awesomeness in the bath - bubble bath from the store, bath salts from a friend (thanks Rachael!), and some body oil stuff I also grabbed at the store.  Everything was lavender scented for relaxing (the bubble bath bottles with lavender were purple so... of course those are the ones I picked! lol).  I brought my digital food thermometer up from the kitchen and obsessively checked the water every few seconds until the tub was full.  And I checked it again probably three times before I got in.  Never went above 105 degrees so I felt very safe.

I set my laptop up and watched an episode of Heroes during my tub time (I'm in Season 2 on Netflix).  Pre-pregnancy I was an avid bubble bath taker and normally Celine Dion is my regular companion during bath time, but I'd been listening to her all evening, so she wasn't invited this time.  And it was fun to watch tv in the tub!

And I have to say that the bath felt AMAZING!!!  All the pressure was gone and the pain was eased and ... it was awesome.  So amazing - seriously, there are no words.  Baths are my new pain-reliever (let's be honest, my ONLY pain-reliever so far!).

(All of you who suggested a bath - here is your moment - go ahead, you can say it together:  "I TOLD YOU SO!")  :)

The only downside to the bath is that about ten minutes after I got out, all my pain returned.  It wasn't worse than it had been, but I've gotten so used to being in constant pain that having that heavenly break reminded me what it was like to not feel it, and it made it so much harder to feel it again.  I think it was worth it though.  But DANG it was hard to have it come back!  Maybe next bath I'll watch TWO episodes of Heroes... ;)

Ooh and I'm very excited about the fact that on Saturday I did my first load of baby clothes laundry!!!

Don't know why that was so fun for me... but it was!  Those little clothes are so dang adorable I just can't get over it!   This weekend I finally had all my appropriate detergents and things to wash them with. I had asked Aaron to pick them up for me last week, but he only got the detergent (because I forget to ask for more than detergent, whoops!).  When I said I forgot to ask him to get softener too and we need some, he said, "Okay no, we are NOT softening the baby's toys!!"  ???  Apparently he thought the special detergent was for washing the baby toys to sanitize them or something.  haha, oh it was funny.  We got softener and all that good stuff at the store on Saturday.

So I finally got to wash my first load of baby clothes!!  Loved it!  They're still in the dryer, but folding and sorting them will be really fun this week.  Especially since we also got bins at the store for me to sort all the baby clothes into!  :)  I figured I should start now with the few things I have already so it's not super overwhelming with all her clothes in a few months.  ...okay fine, actually I just want an excuse to play with her clothes now instead of waiting!  :)

And here's where this post all comes together... I was running the washing machine during my bath and made an amazing discovery.  Apparently when the washer is on, the tub vibrates!!  So I got an awesome, warm, relaxing, vibrating bubble bath.  How cool is that?!  Best discovery ever.

And yes, you did just spend ten minutes of your life reading about my bath and my laundry.  Sorry!  Thanks for stopping by, hopefully life gets more interesting in time for the next post.  :)