Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Hello, hello, hello, everyone. Welcome back to Weird World Adventures, the podcast. I'm your host, Mallory, and I'm here to show you just how weird this world of ours really is.
[00:00:15] And if you listen regularly, you can probably tell that I sound a little sick.
[00:00:22] We have been very stuffy here in our household after our daughter brought in the preschool plague.
[00:00:30] And I am more than eight months pregnant.
[00:00:37] We're due in less than a month now, and I am going to pop. And that, along with the sickness, has been very fun.
[00:00:49] And yet, somehow October has seemed to be the busiest month we've had in a long, long time.
[00:00:55] Next week, we're going to Zion national park, film an episode of Weird World Adventures, and, yeah, it's gonna be fun, but a little exhausting. And then every single Saturday until the end of November. So Halloween, we have a book signing at a Barnes and Noble and one on Sunday the 25th.
[00:01:23] And tomorrow night, I have a special engagement speaking on the Goth Atlas at the Poe Museum.
[00:01:34] So, yeah, it's gonna be. It's. It's. It's gonna be an adventure. We are full up here before baby time. And then as long as I'm not giving birth the week before, the weekend before Tristan is due, we're hoping to go up to the Explorers Club and to celebrate my good friend Holly's wedding, which is going to be great. So we are going to keep going and going and going and going until I go into labor, and then I'm going to disappear for a little while.
[00:02:09] I'm not quite sure what the future looks like for the podcast in my maternity leave time, but I do believe we will have some. We will have some podcasts for you just know between November 12th and January.
[00:02:26] Let's see here, January 4th, it'll be a little dicey, so hang in there with me, please. Just giving you the heads up now, we will have a new baby in that time. So anyway, being thematic with that, we kind of covered what IVF was like, going through IVF the earlier stages of pregnancy, I believe. I then talked about getting into the second trimester and how at week 16, I just popped up one day and was like, I'm awake. And felt like a new human being after having. Being just drained the entire first trimester of pregnancy.
[00:03:05] Yeah, it was my birthday. It was great. It was in June. And I will say I am very thankful, very, very thankful to know that things have been relatively easy for me during this pregnancy. I will say I was very proud because I went to maybe it was like a month ago. Now, I was in one of my. My OB checkups, and my doctor told me, hey, you know what?
[00:03:31] You're, I think, probably the most boring pregnancy that I have. And I was like, I will wear that with a badge of honor. That sounds great. Especially after everything we went through with ivf. I feel so blessed to have just a boring pregnancy. So yay.
[00:03:48] But just because it's boring doesn't mean it's not fascinating. I will say I am very, very, very, very, very lucky in that I could feel Tristan moving.
[00:04:04] I want to say it was. It was week 16. It's as early as you possibly can feel it.
[00:04:12] I felt it, and it was very cool. It was like, you know, back then, it was. I think I've already covered this, so I'm just going very briefly over it. But it was very light and twitchy.
[00:04:26] And since it's just gotten bigger and more prominent, I will say I didn't feel hiccups for a long time. I thought I would surely feel them earlier if I did. I just didn't know what they were. But I definitely know what they feel like now.
[00:04:40] And getting into the third trimester, I've been very lucky in that I've had same levels of pretty focused energy overall. I've definitely. I mean, throughout the whole pregnancy, been more tired than I would be otherwise, but nothing like the first trimester. Very, you know, overall, able to focus, especially with work.
[00:05:04] I've been keeping my energy levels up, except for when I got sick, but that's just because I was sick.
[00:05:11] And he. He has gotten. It's so. It's gotten weird, you know, for a while, it was very cool. I started being able to see. Not only can you watch him move, like, maybe three weeks ago, month ago, we had a pool party here at our house, and I was sitting outside with my friend, and you could just see my entire belly move. Like, you just see him shifting and moving, and it's like, whoa, there's a little alien in there. What's going on? And I mean, like, that. That was how big the movements had gotten. You can just see my belly move.
[00:05:43] And then it became very, like, well, that was a foot.
[00:05:46] You know, you start to see a body part, something like, actually move across the stomach, and you're like, oh, yep, I saw that. So it's been. It's been kind of so bizarre and freaky to feel like they touch my belly and you don't really feel it. There's just this weird giant hard ball that moves in there with. With a little Little baby in there moving around.
[00:06:19] And he specifically, gosh, just the last three days. I will say the last three days have been weird and rough. And we are in.
[00:06:36] I think we're week 36 starts tomorrow.
[00:06:40] Last week I can travel, which is why I'll be in Zion.
[00:06:44] And yep, week 36 starts tomorrow.
[00:06:47] So as of week 35, he has been kind of just stuck in one spot. He's too big to move around too much, and his. His head is definitely down. So you know how they prepare for birth.
[00:07:01] And I can tell because that's where the hiccups come. You know, we get these very constant, like, twitches periodically throughout the day that are his hiccups where I'm like, oh, he has the hiccups right now.
[00:07:12] And then his feet, like, he's to the side, because his feet are on my right side and they are in the same spot at all times. Pretty much I can just put my hand on them. So right now. Right now I'm putting my hand on his foot.
[00:07:26] And then he kicks me a little bit every time I put my hand there. And he just kicks back and, you know, like, acknowledges that I'm touching him. So it's, you know, that's. There's that. But it started.
[00:07:38] It stopped being so fun the last few days because he's moving. Maybe it's not that he's moving all the time, more frequently, it might be that I feel it much stronger because he's so big.
[00:07:52] So I just am trying to work. I'm at my computer, I'm trying to get stuff done, and there is just this baby full, you know, five and a half pound baby, at this point, shifting around inside me, just.
[00:08:09] And I feel everything.
[00:08:11] And, you know, he'll. He'll punch at or push at my hip bones.
[00:08:16] So then I'm feeling pressure on my hip bones and the bladder. So then you have to pee immediately because something's pushing on your bladder. And he's been kicking the bladder for a while, but it's just getting more extreme.
[00:08:28] And then the feet, you know, he just. He kicks the same spot because he's stuck in the same spot. So he's kicking my ribs and he's kicking, like, the side of my stomach on my right side, just over and over and over again in the same spot. And he pushes against it when he stretches. And I'm just like, oh, it's hard. It hurts. It's like stopped being fun and cute, and I still kind of like it, but now it just kind of hurts too. And so it's been really fun to try to work and.
[00:09:00] Yeah, it's been really fun to try to work and get stuff done while he's just, like, beating my insides.
[00:09:06] And so. And I've been sick, so I've been more tired and way more dazed and sleeping way heavier but getting less great sleep. So.
[00:09:17] But, but I. Overall, I will take the energy level. I'm thankful that we've been able to do everything we set out to do throughout all of this, that MallorySadventures.com is still, still creating content.
[00:09:32] We still have stuff scheduled and coming out every day.
[00:09:36] I'm scheduled now up through his birth, which is really exciting because if anything happens, you know, we're scheduled out and we're still, you know, filming episodes of Weird World. I'm going to have an episode of Weird World from Zion and, you know, the petroglyph park where I am just huge. It's gonna be great. It's like, hey, remember that, you know, this episode I filmed when I was eight and a half months pregnant?
[00:10:00] So really excited about that. It'll be great.
[00:10:06] You know, we. The fact that, you know, I'm. I'm still feeling well enough to travel. I'm very happy about that last trip in before, before the baby and the fact that we've been able to do all of our book signings and that we are still continuing to do them up through his birth. And I'm just, just very grateful. This whole pregnancy thing has been such a weird experience. And so I want to talk about it on Weird World Adventures and the podcast and everything, because it's weird. I mean, you are growing another entity inside of yourself. And I know we talked about this before, but you know that.
[00:10:50] But the thing that just makes it so bizarre is like, he has his own sleep, wake schedule. He is living inside me. He is asleep when I'm awake. He's awake sometimes when I'm asleep, and he wakes me up. You know, he is, I guess, living his own best life inside me right now on his own schedule. And it's just this separate person. And it makes me wonder how much I'm going to miss that feeling when I give birth. Because, I mean, I probably won't because he'll be out with me all the time, you know, next to me and, you know, in his, like, bassinet or whatever. But he'll be with me all the time.
[00:11:33] But there's just this. It's just such a weird feeling that I'm going through life right now. I'm Going to Kroger. I'm doing my job. I'm visiting friends, and.
[00:11:43] And there's this baby inside me, and I feel him all the time, doing his own thing.
[00:11:49] And I feel like, you know, will I miss that feeling? Because I never feel alone. He's always here. You know, I can talk to him. He's here.
[00:11:58] And it'll be weird, I feel like, when he's out, because then I'm just me again. I'm not sharing my body with anybody else. It's just me, and he's gone.
[00:12:09] And again, he'll be. He'll be outside with me. So I'm not. It's not. You know, I know that, but I'm just feeling empty. In your own body. Like, it's. It's gonna be a weird feeling. I wonder. I just wonder how that's going to. Well, it's gonna be. So that'll be interesting to kind of discover as we. As we go through after I give birth.
[00:12:31] And, yeah, that'll be. That'll be in itself. It's its own adventure.
[00:12:37] But I hope you guys are okay with this being a shorter podcast, because I have a baby pushing up against my ribs right now, and it's very unpleasant.
[00:12:47] But, yeah, overall, I mean, there hasn't been much to say otherwise about the third trimester, because thankfully, I have had a boring pregnancy. You know, it's just the fact that I feel him every day. And yes, there is massive heartburn, because if you haven't looked at the videos of what happens to your internal organs while you're pregnant, please do, because it's horrifying. You're like. Everything gets smushed in your.
[00:13:14] Your stomach is up by your throat, so you have really fun heartburn.
[00:13:19] And I'm gonna end it with reading you some really fun facts about pregnancy that you might not know. And then we'll call it. And next week, we'll be at Zion National Park.
[00:13:31] The fetus is biologically a parasite. The baby doesn't just grow peacefully. Its cells aggressively invade mother's arteries to rebuild them for its own needs. If the mother lacks calcium, the fetus literally dissolves her bones and teeth, taking the minerals for itself.
[00:13:49] It will take everything it needs, even if it depletes the mother's resources to the limit.
[00:13:54] Yeah, that's nice, isn't it? And, you know, it's funny, it's true, because my lips have cracked in the corners. You know, that terrible feeling. We all know what I'm talking about.
[00:14:04] That has happened so frequently since I've been pregnant, because as soon as I don't get enough water, he's like, well, I'm just gonna suck your water out. So I've been very dehydrated, and that's the first thing that happens.
[00:14:17] This one I knew. And by the way, he has the hiccups right now, which is fun to feel. Just poop, hiccup, hiccup. All right. Anyway, amniotic fluid is urine. It's urine. Starting from the second trimester, the fetus begins to actively swallow the amniotic fluid and pee in it. And by the end of the pregnancy, most of the fluid the baby floats in and breathes in is its own sterile urine. I did know that one.
[00:14:46] The baby's cells remain in the mother's brain forever. This phenomenon is called fetal microchimerism. Fetal cells penetrate through the placenta into the mother's bloodstream and migrate to her heart, lungs, and even her brain. They stay there for decades. And if the mother has a damaged organ, the baby cells can come to the rescue and try to restore it. But the fact is, the mother never belongs to only herself. Again, the size of your organs change to make room for the uterus, which I mentioned, which increases 500 times. That is crazy.
[00:15:23] The mother's internal organs are literally flattened and pushed apart. The intestines get shoved into corners. The stomach rises to the throat, hence the heartburn. And the heart increases in volume to shift to pump 50% more blood.
[00:15:37] Again, there's some fun videos out there. They might terrify you, but you should watch them.
[00:15:42] And the size of the organs.
[00:15:47] Last one.
[00:15:48] The mother's brain physically shrinks. MRIs. Studies have shown that during pregnancy, the volume of gray matter in women decreases. The brain turns off some social and analytical functions to fully focus on survival instincts and the bond with the child.
[00:16:05] This is called maternal amnesia, and it's a terrifying example of how biology rewires a person's identity.
[00:16:13] Fun. Anyway, that's all. I just wanted to share that with you because I read that and was, like, fun things to think about right here at the end before I get this baby out and start a new chapter.
[00:16:28] So thank you guys so much for tuning in.
[00:16:32] Stay tuned for new content from Zion National Park. We're going to be at Zion Mountain Ranch, which I'm really excited about if you haven't. By the way, Weird World Adventures is growing its presence everywhere. We are going to be free to stream on Tubi here soon. Like I said, we are also going to be streaming on YouTube TV, so that's fun YouTube TV and movies.
[00:16:58] And we are already free to stream on Plex and Xumo, so there's a lot of options. So if you put in Weird World Adventures into your smart tv, it'll prompt you where you can watch it. And there's a lot of free options now, so please stream on. Enjoy the show. I really hope you guys check it out and love it. Be sure to check out MallorySadventures.com for more.
[00:17:23] And especially if you're in the Virginia area, please follow along and come say hi at our book signings. We would really love that. I can't wait to see everybody.
[00:17:33] Thank you in advance for coming out.
[00:17:36] And until next time, everybody stay weird.
