Over Cooked

Pregnancy does strange things to one's body. I have read about and expected these things. But something still caught me off guard.

When you are pregnant, your skin goes nuts. You get acne and dark blotches and skin tags and hairs growing out of strange places... I expected these things... but I was spared the indignity of them all...

Or so I thought.

Memorial Day weekend, my husband sailed in a regatta with one of our neighbors. We hadn't got our boat in the water yet but I still wanted to enjoy the sun and work on my tan. So I layed out in front of our house while I waited for him to get home.

Normally, it takes a few hours for me to start to show some color. I can be on the water for 3 hours and tan well but not burn til I've been out for 4 or 5 hours. After about an hour and 15 min, my husband got home and I went inside and we went about our day as usual.

As I was showering in preparation for a party we were attending that night, I realized I had burned a bit. Not too bad though so I wasn't concerned... but by the end of the night I was miserable. The entire front half of me was bright red and on fire... even the front of my legs which never burn. All after an hour! Someone at the party even asked if I was trying to cook the baby faster...

I figured I would just lay out the next day to work on my back side to even things out a bit but only for 30-45 min so I didn't burn my back, too. Then I remembered, I can't lay on my belly anymore!!! Was I doomed to be two-toned for the entire summer?

Well, it rained the next day so I couldn't even go to the dog park and stand with my back to the sun...

The next weekend, I layed out again and figured out that I could still lay on my tummy if I propped myself up on my elbows and kept them directly under my shoulders. So I worked on evening things out.

Here is where it gets tricky. The first day I layed out, I was just in shorts and a tank which I pulled up to expose the baby bump. So my tan lines were more like a tube top than a bikini top. So the next time I layed out, I put SPF 50 on all the places I was tan from the week before so that the white spots around my bikini top could catch up. Well, I overlapped the sun screen a bit and now I have finger marks in the white part that was supposed to be getting tan! I am 3 different colors! My tan is so messed up now that I will be surprised if it evens out by the end of the summer!

Who would have imagined that a sun worshiper like me would end up hyper-sensitive to the sun?