Tag Archives: Second Trimester

Feeling Beautiful in Pregnancy

26 Weeks 0 Days

I spent a lot of my first pregnancy hating the way that I looked.

Feeling fat even though I knew I should be celebrating the fact that I was growing life inside me. Feeling un-sexy regardless of knowing my husband still found me desirable. Feeling disgusting rather than relishing in the changes my body was making. It saddens me that I look back at that wonderful time and remember it through my old eyes as a stressful and shameful time.

I know it’s not that way for every pregnant woman. I have a long history of hating my body and weight, which made it that much more difficult to deal with the changes I was going through. I do think that most pregnant women feel this way at least a little though, which is sad. It’s sad that society has pressured us all so much to be skinny and perfect that we can’t enjoy such a short and wonderful time in life when we take on different curves that are the tell-tale sign of a new life.

So this time around, I vowed to celebrate my new curves. I vowed to love this body and everything that is happening to it. The acne, the sometimes greasy hair, the linea nigra, the stretch marks, and of course, the big belly. Part of this, of course, is taking my pregnancy photos–something I started doing immediately after I found out I was pregnant even though I knew it was just bloated tummy I was taking a picture of (and even earlier than that, my belly that people had mistaken as pregnant in the past when I was not). Part of what I love about my weekly photos is the variety. At first, I thought I needed to “get pretty” before each photo. Then one day I needed to take my photo, but I didn’t want to put on make-up and do my hair, so I just took it as I was. I love that picture just as much as the rest. The same goes for today’s picture in which I’m lounging around the house with my family. I love that my weekly photos can show not only the growing belly, but also the workings of my day-to-day life during my pregnancy.

I’m also working on my daily attitude. Loving not only the baby inside, but the belly too. This belly represents a type of bond that I only get to experience once in this child’s lifetime. This belly is large, round, and beautiful. This belly is not an excuse to eat whatever I want because I’m fat anyway. I am not fat. I am pregnant.

I also plan on getting professional maternity photos done, which will include at least some photos with a naked belly. Even if don’t like showing skin and I don’t post those photos on the blog or display them in my house, I’ll still love them 20 years from now when my babies are no longer babies. Who knows, maybe I’ll love them so much you’ll all get to see.

I am 26 weeks 0 days pregnant. I’m finally starting to get some cravings. Last week I really wanted a specific sandwich from a specific restaurant I went to a few weeks earlier, regardless of the fact that I had already eaten lunch. I happily ate my whole second lunch. I’ve also really been loving pickles. No, not with ice cream. Just pickles all by themselves. Mmm…

Peanut is really loving my belly lately. Before I would ask her if she wanted to kiss my belly or tell the baby she loves him/her and she would happily oblige. Now she just randomly decides she wanted to give the baby an eskimo kiss or tell him/her about her day at preschool. She also told me that, while she says it’s a brother, his name will be Sister.

The Importance of Tailored Sitting

25 Weeks 3 Days

I love my recliner. Love, love, LOVE my recliner. It’s the perfect way to relax at the end of the day and do some knitting while I watch TV. I love to cuddle Peanut on it while we watch a movie. I love to lounge and read a book. And I’m giving it up.

Why would I do that? Posterior. Babies. Are. Not. Worth. It.

Posterior means that your baby is basically facing the wrong way. My midwife called it “sunny side up”. With the baby facing this way, all the pressure is on your back rather than your uterus. Seriously, it’s not something I would wish on my worst enemy. While I came out of Peanut’s birth feeling like a new woman, I was terrified to ever experience that again. It was so much work and not what I prepared for. Of course, I think our preparations definitely made the difference. I think I would have ended up going to the hospital to get the sleep meds that my midwife suggested if it weren’t for the counter-pressure that my husband did Every. Single. Contraction. I think that while the experience was something amazing that changed my life momentously, I don’t want to do it again. Not like that anyway.

So that’s why I’m giving up the recliner.

Yes, there are plenty of women who recline through the last half of their pregnancy for eight hours and day and don’t have posterior babies and blah blah blah, but it’s because reclining increases your risks of having a posterior baby. It’s the same argument that people use for formula feeding. If I were of a different opinion on that particular debate, I may tell you that my husband is one of the smartest people I have ever met and he was exclusively formula-fed beyond, from what I understand, just a few weeks. It’s all about increased risk. Just because you breastfed that doesn’t mean your child is default smarter, just that they have a higher potential to be. Just because you sit in a recliner regularly throughout pregnancy doesn’t mean you’re going to have a posterior baby, just that you’re more likely to.

As I look back on my last pregnancy, I know I should have known to give up reclining. Every appointment from when they could actually palpitate the baby on, they told me she was facing the wrong way. They told me she still had plenty of time to flip, so I didn’t worry about it. I knew the Bradley Method advised against reclining, but I figured doing my pelvic rocks would make up for it. I should have known to start working on her position earlier. I should have known that since she was already in the “bad” position, that I shouldn’t give her more incentive to stay there.

So this time, I’m considering myself “high risk” for a posterior baby. I have absolutely no data stating that you’re more likely to have a posterior baby if you’ve had one before, but I don’t need statistics to get me to realize I do not want to go through that kind of birth again, so I am going to do what I can to prevent it–which includes tailored sitting.

Image courtesy of http://transitiontoparenthood.com

Tailored sitting is another important “exercise” of the Bradley Method. The word exercise is in quotations because you’re really not doing anything at all, just sitting as you should. Sit up straight (which means your belly kind of sticks out) and in what they called “Indian style” when I was a kid (obviously 10 year olds didn’t care about political correct-ness). You can also sit with your feet together if that’s more comfortable. Even if you don’t sit with your legs in a pretzel, it’s still a benefit to sit with a straight back (e.g. When I’m in class it’s not very logical to sit in those chairs traditionally tailored, but I can still put my feet on the floor and sit with a straight back).

This along with avoiding reclining and doing my pelvic tilts I hope will keep this babe in the right position. There are also things you can do further along if your baby isn’t turning into the right position, but I’ll explore those further if I’m in that position again (pun intended). I figure if I can handle a posterior birth, I can handle any birth.

I am now 25 weeks and 3 days pregnant. We’re just chugging along. Twig gets upset if I put books on my belly and kicks them. He/she can also reach my ribs now, which isn’t too fun even in this not-as-hard-kicks stage. I think Peanut felt Twig for the first time the other day. She always tells me that she felt the baby when she touches my belly (even if she pulls her hand off after 2 seconds), but this time I felt the baby kick where her hand was and her eyes went all wide. I don’t think she really understood it, but it’s still awesome.

I’ve been super tired lately and I don’t know why. It’s like no matter what time I go to bed, I can’t get myself to get out in the morning. I’ve been almost late to class multiple times because of this, so I need to get it under control. I’m also much more snappy to Peanut on the mornings when we’re running late, so that gives me extra incentive to get our morning routine back in order. Any suggestions for feeling more rested while pregnant? Maybe I need to take up afternoon naps again? Hrm. Maybe I’ll go have one of those right now.

My Form of Early Nesting

I bought a minivan.

Yeah, I’m probably crazy. Yeah, minivans aren’t “cool” by any means. Yeah, I’m losing some gas mileage (like 8 MPG sadly). But I bought myself a minivan which I am thoroughly happy about and I stayed out of debt in the process.

I’ve wanted a minivan for a while. Everyone thought I was silly because I only had one child and don’t you need like 10 before you consider such a thing? Honestly, I hated getting Peanut and all of our stuff into and out of my tiny Mitsubishi Lancer. That car was great when I was just me or just adults, but with her in the middle having someone on either side was cramped to say the least and after this new baby was born I wouldn’t have been able to take more than one adult with me in my car at any time. Plus trying to do something like driving to Vegas when we only had one kid worth of stuff was so packed in that car that when a thing of water spilled it ruined like $50 worth of things we had packed in there.

So I’ve been tired of that car for a while, but didn’t want to tie myself into a car payment (both of our cars were paid off) and wanted a nice minivan, so I figured we’d wait. Then in all of the paranoia (which I still call paranoia because I’m convinced it’s not twins by this point) I realized that if we do have twins, we’d have to get a new car. Still not wanting to tie ourselves into a car payment, could we possibly get one that wasn’t up to previous standards and stay within budget? Turns out yes. Even possibly that our prior standards were kind of silly.

Before I wanted a new (or near) Toyota Sienna or Honda Odyssey. When it comes to cars, I don’t care what you say, Japanese-made are the best. When I bought the Mitsubishi I gave my parents back the 1990 Toyota Camry they bought me thinking it was on it’s last leg and four years later it’s still running strong. When it comes to minivans, Every. Single. Source. says that it’s either the Sienna or Odyssey that outshines the rest. Part of my new life of trying to simplify and downsize means that I don’t necessarily have to have the best. Of course it also doesn’t mean I have to buy a clunker, but I could find something nicely in the middle.

I started researching vans and quickly threw out the Dodge Caravans and Kia Sedonas from reviews on trusted sites (Edmunds has reviews for every make, model, and year that are very nice, though sometimes dated). I decided that I would like to stick to either a Ford Windstar or Chevy Venture with a possibility of some others. I found plenty of cars worth looking at, but the caveat of buying a minivan was that I would have to sell my car and at least break even (definitely preferable if we could make some money in this process and put that towards debt).

We decided to spruce up my car and put it up on a local car buying site, just to see if there was interest. Oh boy there was interest. We listed my 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer that had a Kelley Blue Book value of $4300 for $4000. We had about 4-5 different groups (mostly teenagers with their parents) test drive it, 4 offers (some of which hadn’t even come to see the car, which is kind of silly), and eventually sold it for $3800. This all happened within 5 days. I stuck to my guns with the price because, while it wasn’t in perfect shape (though who would expect a car that’s 8 years old to be in perfect shape), the Blue Book for a car in good shape was the $4300 and my car very much fit into that category. I knew that if I didn’t get enough to buy a minivan, it wouldn’t be happening, so why would I sell my car short? One of the people seriously offered me $2500 without even seeing the car!

When we found our buyer, I decided that it was time to get serious about finding a minivan. I start school next week and while we would have survived on one car, it wouldn’t have been fun. I went to town with my mother and looked at cars I had found online and all of them ended up being bleh. While trying to find an address, we passed a dealership with a van out front and decided to stop. Wow, this van was amazing.

When we went back to town the next day (money in the bank from my car sell), we still couldn’t find a van that matched up to this one we saw. My husband was feeling sketchy about the miles (161K, which is pretty high for an 8 year old car), but it was just so obviously well taken care of. It had all of the nice little things like a mirror to watch the back seat, DVD player, power driver’s seat, etc. for $3500 (which ended up being $3900 with taxes and what not). We decided a car with higher miles and pride of ownership was worth it over a car with lower miles that was beaten the crap out of. No better way to state it.

When I was reading my pregnancy book this morning and it was talking about nesting, I started to think. My house is a mess, I’m not at all ready for school (and Peanut’s preschool) to start, and I often go hours without even thinking about the fact that I have a baby in my belly. I haven’t even kept up with the blog about my pregnancy! Obviously, I’m not nesting, right? Wrong. I took my nesting in a different route this time. I spend a considerable amount of time over this last week or so preparing my vehicle for our new arrival and keeping our finances in check all the while. I am nesting, just in a different way than I expected.

19 weeks 0 days

I am 19 weeks and 0 days today. Things are pretty happy around here. I’m still getting round ligament pain and it’s getting worse, but that might be because I’m running around like crazy and haven’t had a whole lot of time to rest. The dizziness is getting better and that is lovely. I also have a bit more energy now-a-days, but I’m still yawning come 6PM. My boobs are huge and my fingers are swollen. ‘Nuff said there.

I’m finally gaining weight now. I went down to 8 pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight (possibly lower because I think the pre-pregnancy guestimation was a bit on the flattering side) and stayed there for a while. Now I’m up to just 4 lbs below. I’m sure that has something to do with my ravenous appetite. Wow, I could eat a whole cow. Mmm… I want a hamburger.

I also think my colostrum has come in. Peanut didn’t nurse at all for a couple of days. One day because she just didn’t ask and the second day was because she asked right when I was rushing out of bed to get our Canadian friend to the airport, so I didn’t have time to sit and nurse, then she didn’t ask again for the rest of the day. Then yesterday she asked to nurse in the morning and I heard her actually swallowing. It’s a bit more painful now and still gives me the heebeegeebees, but it’s not enough that I’m thinking weaning. She even asked to nurse a second time that day after she hit her head, but then she wanted to spend the night at her grandparents’, so we’ll see if she nurses today at all (since she really only asks in the morning it seems and I obviously didn’t see her this morning). I told her that Twig can hear her today (because it said so in my email) and so she was just talking up a storm to him/her. Hopefully she stays this excited about her new sibling throughout the whole pregnancy.

The Art of Not Knowing

17 weeks 5 days

We live in an age of entitlement.

We want it now. We do not wait. No pleasure is stemmed from patience. When someone comments on our Facebook status, our smart phones tell us immediately. When you want to go buy a new rug, you don’t save up for it, you buy it on credit. When you want to know the sex of your baby, you just get an ultrasound and voila, you know.

It hasn’t always been this way.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if I could be pregnant with twins. Last time around, it wasn’t even a thought in my head because I had an ultrasound at 7 weeks that showed one lovely beating heart. While early ultrasounds don’t always catch the second twin, my second one at around 19 weeks most certainly would have. Beyond that, wasn’t in any of the groups that increased my chances of twins nor did my symptom-free first trimester give me any reason to suspect.

This time around, it’s been a bit different. First off, I haven’t seen Twig on any sort of monitor. I’ve listened to the heartbeat once (to put my mind at ease that there is indeed a baby in there). I’ve also had a lot more symptoms than last time, am absolutely huge, I feel like I have an octopus in my belly, and I was breastfeeding when I conceived (did you know that increases the chances of twins? I certainly didn’t). So I’ve been wondering. Alright, maybe even worrying.

I know all these things I’ve described can easily be a singleton pregnancy. Regardless, I have that nagging worry in my mind that it could be twins.

I asked one of my friends who knows a lot about pregnancy what she thought. Basically she said that it could go either way, but in the course of the conversation something occurred to me–why do I want to know? Why is it so important that I find out this second if it’s twins? It’s not.

I spoke to my midwife and she basically said that it should be obvious if I’m pregnant with twins. Beyond twenty weeks, she said most twin pregnancies start shooting up in weight and fundal height. In that case, she’ll recommend an ultrasound and that’ll confirm or deny the suspicion. If it turns out to be twins I can still birth naturally and at home, which is what I would choose regardless.

So there’s no point in knowing now. I’ll know soon enough and it won’t change a thing that I know a bit later. I don’t need to worry about it and I don’t need to stress. I’ll just continue doing what I’m doing and within the next few months it’ll become apparent one way or the other. I can deal with delayed satisfaction. I can wait.

I am now 17 weeks and 5 days. Still super thirsty, but carrying around the big jug of water deals with that. I have a couple of skin tags and that’s super weird. Round ligament pain is getting worse. Lots of walking almost always brings it on now. Really, lots of walking in the hot hot sun makes me feel really exhausted really quick. I feel like I could sit around all day and be happy.

Twig is still wiggling like crazy. Sometimes it’s a couple of days between movement, but then I’ll feel like I have an octopus in my belly for 20 minutes out of nowhere. Honestly, the days between might just be particularly busy ones, so maybe I just don’t sit still long enough to feel the movement. :-P

All I Want For Baby is a Rocking Chair

The Enemy

For the last two and a half years, I’ve been fighting with this beast. When I was pregnant, I really wanted a glider rocking chair to sit and nurse in. I have always loved these types of rocking chairs. Of course, being a student with a student husband living in my in-laws’ basement, we didn’t exactly have money for one of the $300-not-including-the-footrest ones from Babies R Us, so I started searching consignment shops.

I was pretty particular on the type of rocking chair and the price, so it took a while to find one. Finally I found one that seemed great (minus some staining) at a store nearby and it was way below my maximum price. Seemed perfect.

Nothing is ever perfect.

For a while, putting a tile under one side made the clicking stop, but then it started to squeak. Finally I figured maybe the tile was causing the squeaking, so I asked my father to help and he tighted the bolts and sanded down the side that was causing the clicking. Both got better, but neither stopped. For over a year I would sit on this thing and try to lean that way or the other to get it to stop making noise so I could just rock and nurse my baby to sleep, then when she became a toddler there was no way to lean that wouldn’t cause noise, so we stopped using it. It sat in Peanut’s room unused until today.

I was planning on just tossing it. I hate throwing useful things out, but I had decided this thing was Throughly. Not. Useful. My husband talked me down from my cliff and suggested I give it away for free. Even sitting there writing the ad, I was still convinced no one would ever want to come pick it up, free or not. Within 5 minutes of the ad being placed, I got two separate calls. So, as I type, it sits in my driveway waiting for someone to come pick it up who can hopefully give it a second life.

Months ago, before I was even trying to get pregnant, I told my husband I only wanted one thing for this baby–a brand-spankin’ new fantastic rocking chair. No, not one of those ones from Babies R Us, but one from a local furniture shop. This store has expensive stuff, but it’s the kind of furniture that you can pass down to your kids because it’s so good. Now that I’m pregnant, I’m sticking to my one-thing-only plan.

I have baby clothes (some of which are gender neutral) that I can reuse. Even if I do need more (or if I have a little boy in my tummy, which no one will know for about another 26 weeks), I won’t need much. Last time around it was nice to have so many clothes when Peanut spit up everywhere, but did I really need to go a week before running out? Did I really need to do 3 loads at once to get through them all? Less clothes equals less stress.

I already have a baby swing (which was the only way I could put Peanut down and not be next to her for many months), a car seat (sold the infant car seat because they’re not necessary and actually unhealthy and unsafe outside of the car, so just Peanut’s old convertible car seat), toys (which I’ll be paring down again soon), of course all my baby carriers, and even a stroller (which we bought consignment and hardly use).

We don’t need a crib because we co-sleep, we don’t need bottles because I’m breastfeeding exclusively again (and for the very small amount I may be away, I still have my hand pump and a few of my favorite bottles from last time), I don’t need a baby tub because I all three (any maybe sometimes four if we’re feeling ambitious) can just hop in the tub together, we don’t need diapers because I saved all of Peanut’s and I’m going to do elimination communication this time, and we don’t need the other fifty billion baby items they try to tell you that you need (and many of which I did have) when you’re having a baby.

Last time, the lady at Babies R Us actually got mad at me because my registry list wasn’t long enough. She started telling me most moms have X amount of things on their lists because the more the merrier and blah blah blah. My thought then was why would I ask for more things rather than just the things I want or need? Of course, anything that is given will be graciously received, but I just don’t feel the need to ask for so many things this time. It just doesn’t seem necessary. All you need to raise a baby is a boob and yourself. The other things are nice (and many of them are wonderful), but much of it is just fluff you’ll never or hardly use and it’ll sit around your house cluttering things up for years to come.

I am now 14 weeks and 1 day. Woohoo! Second trimester! Last time, the second trimester wasn’t all it was cracked up to be for me. I didn’t really have many symtoms the first trimester, so the second was where I started feeling pregnant and blah. This time around seems like the second trimester may truly be the blessed trimester I always hear of, if not just because the first trimester kind of sucked.

I’m still peeing like crazy. Still drinking 50 gallons a day. Still trying not to fall down when I stand up. Luckily, the headaches are entirely gone since I started wearing my glasses again. I’m feeling a bit more tired than usual, but I’ll go ahead and say that’s at least in part because of the fact that I have a lot on my plate at the moment. I’m also feeling super irritable, but I can’t tell if that’s stress or pregnancy.

I’m also super klutzy. I hadn’t ever stubbed my toe on Peanut’s highchair (which my husband claims is a toe-stubbing hazard) until a few weeks ago. I think this is pretty on par for me with pregnancy. Last pregnancy I was still waiting at a Chinese food restaurant I had worked at for years. I hadn’t ever had a single accident, then all of a sudden I had 3 within a month. My boss said that if I kept up with it, he was going to have to start taking it out of my checks. I was also quickly getting too big and tired to function around all the people working, so I quit that job soon after. Guess at least this time I only have myself to injure.