Well, I was worried that I wouldn’t get around to writing this while I was actually still in the third trimester… but this baby’s got other plans! I’m currently 41 weeks + 1 day as I write this.
This baby is taking its sweet time to make its grand entrance, apparently!
I was lucky to have a pretty easy first and second trimester, with almost no morning sickness – just lots of exhaustion and growing pains, but nothing that wasn’t manageable. Then along came the third trimester, which brought with it a gooooood number of bumps in the road.
Wish I could find a site to credit this to, but a friend sent it to me!
I absolutely love positive affirmations – whether they’re used to center yourself around your pregnancy and birth, or just in everyday life. It’s SO helpful to me to have a word or a phrase accessible in the back of my mind to pull on when I’m feeling stressed, off balance, overwhelmed, or anxious. And I’ve REALLY needed them during this pregnancy!
I had a wonderfully uncomplicated first & second trimesters of pregnancy, so I feel a little bit like I’m “paying” for it with this lovely third trimester!
I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, much to my surprise, right around the start of the third trimester, after failing two glucose tolerance tests. I was absolutely not expecting this! I went into the first test feeling like it was a totally unnecessary test {just about every pregnant lady has to take it, depending on your doctor} because why on earth would I have diabetes? I definitely had a preconceived notion that gestational diabetes only happened to people who didn’t take care of their bodies, who didn’t know how to eat right, or that you at least had to have history of it in your family. Yeah, I was a little overweight before getting pregnant, but I wasn’t eating ice cream every night or anything! Oh, how wrong I was – and how damaging those notions can be.
I’m pretty sure almost every mama diagnosed with gestational diabetes {GD for short} goes through a bit of a mourning period, if it’s not an expected diagnosis. WHAT did I do wrong? Is it just because I’m fat and don’t eat enough vegetables? So much self-blame and bad feelings raced around my head. Totally normal feelings, but totally misplaced and ultimately hurtful to myself. If you’re recently diagnosed, tell those thoughts to SHUT IT. They’re wrong and dumb and you’re fine.
I am solidly in the third trimester now {where has the time gone?! I have a feeling I’ll be saying that a lot from now on} and thought I’d share some things that carried me through the second trimester. They say that the second trimester {weeks 13-28, approx.} is when you’re supposed to be glowing, at your peak of comfort and happiness and all that good stuff – I definitely enjoyed the second trimester more than the first, but hey, it wasn’t all sunshine and daisies!
Here are some things that I enjoyed and that helped me stay more comfortable during the second trimester.
This time last year, Ben had just graduated from AFIT, he was starting a new job, friends were moving, I had recently started my job at the library – and I thought we were going through lots of life changes!
Little did I know, one year later, I’d be 20 weeks pregnant with our first child.
My goodness, we are beyond happy for this gigantic life change. Ben and I remark about 50 times a day how lucky we are, how amazing this already is, and how this is such a wildly exciting time in our lives. Every tiny kick I feel is just unreal. We were grinning like idiots during the entire anatomy ultrasound we had last week – seeing that healthy, wiggly babe on the screen made my heart swell with happiness.
I’ve been lucky to have a relatively smooth pregnancy so far. I got away with very little morning sickness in the first trimester, and am suuuuper happy to have some of my energy back in the second trimester so far!
The most ridiculous of the photos from the announcement, haha
I wasn’t quite prepared for the intense anxiety that goes along with all of the unknowns of the first trimester, though. Gosh, while it is such an exciting time, it can be so darn scary at the same time. I had plenty of moments where my fear completely overtook my excitement; where nothing but the passing of time could help. My blood pressure & HR at doctor’s appointments were SO HIGH – then every time I got to hear the heart beat, it went back down to normal. {The nurse literally asked if I felt like I was having a heart attack once because my heart rate was almost as high as baby’s. Oops.}
I totally wanted to be one of those put-together ladies that took the weekly bump photos, wrote out long & detailed weekly updates, etc. etc. But something kept holding me back. We announced the pregnancy on social media right around 12 weeks, which is a little early, and then the next day, had a scare that sent us to the ER, thinking it was all over. After that, as silly as it sounds, I felt like I was going to jinx something by sharing too much and putting too much hope into one teeny tiny fetus. But now that most of that fear is gone, I want to write more so that I have something wonderful to look back on as years go by! This is a giant “first” in our lives and I want to remember every second of it.
