… well for today anyway.

Since getting the SPD and OC diagnoses, I’ve been religiously practising daily yoga rather than relying on the bi-weekly antenatal classes, making sure I’ve been drinking eight glasses of water a day to help flush out toxins, and using a hypnotherapy/relaxation tape in the evenings. Not that I thought it would necessarily help, but wanted to at least feel I was doing *something* rather than blindly accepting spiralling medical diagnoses.

This has had three effects:

1. I can wear my rings again. For many weeks now, I have had to remove my wedding and engagement rings because they were just too tight and cutting off the circulation in my hand. I’ve now discovered that they fit perfectly again without the slightest feeling of snugness. Presumably, I’m now less “puffy” and have less water retention. Either way it’s very nice to be able to wear them again.

2. I’m keeping my mobility. A couple of times I’ve mentioned when I’ve overdone it (the walk to the hospital and carrying Akra Jr back from nursery yesterday) and I’ve hardly been able to get out of bed the next day. Every time I’ve “forced” myself to do yoga on waking and have found that it makes the difference between being in so much pain I can hardly move to being able to make fluid movement with only slight discomfort. On good days, I don’t have any aches at all as a result of the gentle exercise.
3. My last blood test came back normal. Yup, no more raised bile acids, next hospital trip not until the 22nd! Okay, I can’t necessarily claim it was the yoga/water/relaxation that has achieved this – maybe I just had a bug that my body was fighting off, maybe it was going to sort itself out anyway, maybe it’ll come back in a week or two. I don’t really care. I’m now back to “normal pregnant woman” status!

Going to be keeping this up for the rest of the pregnancy I think. I hereby declare that yoga is the best thing since sliced bread…