Spring break has come and gone.  Which means there are only a few months left of school!  It also means there are a lot of exams and practicals coming up…and, of course, boards.

Spring break was really, really great this year.  My husband and I decided to drive to Colorado to visit his childhood hometown and many of his relatives who still live there.  We had an absolute blast, and the trip was over much too fast.  Kudos to Grannie Howard and her amazing cooking…seriously, there were like five desserts to choose from.  It was definitely scary stepping on the scale when I got home.  Never knew I could put on 4-5 lbs in a week, but I guess it is possible.  We also got to do some shopping in Kansas City on our way home.  I got some new maternity clothes, and little Baby Howie got a bunch of cute new outfits, too.

I fully intended to get more boards studying done when we got back, but ended up only getting through one section in First Aid.  But I did find the time to bake homemade sticky buns and pizza, so it wasn’t a total lost.

Most of all, I enjoyed spending time with my husband.  I forget how little time we get to spend together sometimes, and it was just really nice to hang out with my best friend again…no school, no studying, just us.

Well, it was nice while it lasted.  Back to the grindstone this week.  Today we covered how to treat pregnant patients in OTM, which was kind of interesting.  They asked me to be the model for the day, which I decided to pass on.  Having 172 people stare at my belly isn’t really my idea of fun.  But it was nice that all the treatments we learned didn’t require lying on my belly.

Then this afternoon we had a practice board exam.  It was half the length of the real exam, so about 4 hours.  It honestly wasn’t so bad.  I was a little worried I would be too tired to do well, but I did better than I thought I would.  The baby only kicked me for about half of it, so she didn’t distract me too much.  I really hope she sleeps most of the day when I take the real exam.

And, other than that, not much else is new.  I am 23 weeks and starting to feel like a whale.  I get a lot more stares nowadays…it’s like nobody has ever seen a pregnant med student before!  And…we found an apartment!  One more thing checked of my to-do list.  I also picked out a hospital and a potential ob/gyn in Phoenix, so it seems like things are slowly starting to fall into place.  One step at a time…