At Least It's Crossed Off My Bucket List

This post is over a month late, but I need to record it anyway. In June of 2015 I had the great opportunity to cross off a bucket list item: Go Whitewater Rafting. If we use our brains though, we see that Damaris also happened to be pregnant during June 2015, which was NOT an ideal situation. Thankfully, nothing terrible happened,but the experience is definitely filed away under the "never again" category.

So here's the deal with why it was not a good idea to go rafting while 17 weeks pregnant: 
1) I went from Corpus Christi, TX to Vernal, UT... an altitude change of 5,320 feet. I was fighting to catch my breath while just walking through the airport, plus pregnancy already causes shortness of breath. It was terrible.
2) Utah was HOT. I'm used to hot and humid weather, but I'm always INSIDE a nicely air-conditioned building. It turns out the great outdoors is not air conditioned. It was 105 degrees out there.
3) Because we were traveling, I had little choice but to eat mostly unhealthy foods, which affected my already-delicate blood pressure situation.
4) I was in the awkward stage of pregnancy where I just looked super puffy and overweight, not exactly belly-bumping it yet. I felt like I got a lot of "you're too fat to be doing this" looks, which was probably just my imagination, but I still felt self-conscious.
5) I was too big for the life vest to fit correctly over my stomach, so even though our guide tugged hard on the straps to make it super tight (ouch), it still rode up over my shoulders and hit my chin and allowed for very limited movement overall.
6) I'm positive I didn't take a full "fill-up-your-lungs" breath the entire day. Nobody noticed, but I was constantly on the verge of a panic attack from not being able to breathe correctly.

But here's the deal with why I went whitewater rafting anyway:
1) It was on my bucket list, and I felt that once the baby was born bucket list opportunities would be almost nonexistent.
2) I had never really vacationed in Utah, or in any place with mountains for that matter, and I was interested in the geology.
3) I felt I owed it to my super adventurous husband, who spends the majority of his life working and was extremely excited about this trip.
4) I was stubborn and wanted to prove to myself that I could do anything I wanted, pregnant or not.

And here are some pictures of our adventure:

See the difference between how Phil's vest fit and how mine fit? He didn't mind his at all.

The mountains and rock formations were BEAUTIFUL. I love geology.

Fun fact, I also went to the ER the next day. Apparently I hurt my rotator cuff while paddling. 

This trip felt like a near-death experience to me, but it was a walk in the park for my husband.