Third Is the One with the Treasure Chest.

In my post about the first trimester, I said "first is the worst, second is the best, third is the one with the treasure chest". We will get our "treasure chest" soon, but it turns out the third trimester had a whole boat load of other "treasures". 

The Body

Waddling

The first day I noticed I was really “waddling” was a particularly warm one. It was probably 70 degrees out and I had been in the office all day, so I decided to walk to the car instead of taking the shuttle. I was wearing a black and white flowy dress, and my giant belly made it look like a tent. I was halfway to the car when I became keenly aware that my black and white outfit paired with my distinct waddle made me look like a massive penguin. I actually do frequently “waddle” when I walk anyway because of a hip deformity that makes one leg longer than another, but the waddle has legitimate reasons in pregnancy. Things are shifting and relaxin, a hormone that loosens all of your joints, makes you clumsy and awkward. It’s necessary to open your pelvis enough for childbirth and it peaks in the third trimester. It affects your entire body though, so the hip pain + extra weight + relaxin hormones making your joints all loosey-goosey gives almost everyone a pronounced “swagger”. 

Weight Gain

Weight gain in the early stages can almost be cute (almost). I had pretty steady weight gain through my second trimester, but in the third I really ballooned up. I’m going to dedicate another post to just the weight gain at another time. 

Appetite & Loss of Appetite

Yes, somehow both happen. My appetite picked up in the second trimester, and early in the third trimester it was borderline out of control. Sometimes I also lost my appetite, especially toward the very end.. It’s not that food didn’t look appealing, I just didn’t have much room for it. There were some days I probably ate less than I did before being pregnant.Then some days I would wake up at 3am and find myself half asleep, eating a bowl of cereal in my completely dark kitchen.

Braxton-Hicks

Or what I call the “useless” contractions. They’re not really useless, they’re getting your uterus to practice for the big day, but they're not really doing much. I started feeling these regularly at about 37 weeks. Some were painful, some I didn’t feel at all. It always felt like something was starting and then never did. It’s disappointing to be feeling uncomfortable contractions for a week straight and have absolutely no progression at all.

Being Humongous

"Are you sure you aren't having twins?"

Eventually, you are just plain huge. I actually felt kind of self-conscious about it sometimes. People I hadn’t run in to in a few weeks would see me and be like “you STILL have a month left?!” Yes…. I know I’m big. Trust me. I know. Yes, I still have several weeks left. I know. It’s absurd. I’m the one living it, thank you very much. I’m not just “belly huge”, though I am huge there as well (sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror before stepping into the shower and think 'holy shit I'm enormous'). I can see it in my face, my arms, my hands, my legs, my feet, my ankles, my butt, my boobs, my everything. I feel like the Michelin man. 

Swelling

Honestly, this is probably my biggest complaint of the third trimester. The weight gain is hard, the fatigue is tough, but there’s good days and bad days. Swelling has been an everyday thing for me. I started to notice it around 32 weeks, mostly in my feet.  A lot of my shoes didn’t fit right by 36 weeks. My feet would be about double the size at the end of the day. By 37 weeks, my hands were swollen every day when I woke up, and by 38 weeks had to start wearing Adam’s shoes. My hands and feet were swollen 24/7, not just the end of the day. I tried to mitigate this by mixing up walking and putting my feet up, avoiding salt, etc., and nothing really helped. Things would get better if I had my feet above my heart for a few minutes, but they would return to their useless brick-like state not long after.

Being Forever Uncomfortable

Strap a giant, awkward, very heavy beach ball to your abdomen and try to get comfortable. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Enough said. Our sleeping situation became a very comical nightly event involving many pillows, a yoga bolster, and me realizing I had to pee AGAIN the second I got semi-comfortable.

Heartburn

Nothing compares to heartburn in the third trimester. Your stomach and esophagus are waaaay higher than they should be, and that hormone relaxin I mentioned before also relaxes your esophagus, allowing acid to bubble up. I tried every natural remedy, but eventually I had to take Zantac twice a day. I didn’t want to, but nothing else worked.

Nausea

This was nothing like the first trimester, thank goodness, but my hunger combined with my peanut-sized stomach created some interesting issues. One bite too many left me feeling like I had literally swallowed a hippopotamus. Fierce heartburn can also make you nauseous. 

The Mind... The So-Near-The-End Pregnancy Mind

Approaching the end

It feels weird to be near the end. It feels like you’ll be pregnant forever, but suddenly you realize that you won’t. It’s like when you realize you’re quitting your job. You’ve been there for so long, there’s no end in sight, and then one day there just is. There’s an end.

Approaching the BITTER end

I consider the ‘bitter end’ to be the last month. You’re full term, you’re huge, nothing is easy or comfortable, you may be *over it*. I’ve had a tough time in my last month. My hormones are changing and I’m super emotional again. I didn’t realize how much it had leveled off in the second trimester/early third trimester until I was suddenly bawling my eyes out over dropping my food on the floor. The fatigue, long days at work, and hormones made me feel really apathetic and withdrawn. Then I would feel guilty. Another woman in my prenatal yoga class had a very similar due date (within the week), and she seemed so cheery and full of energy. I may have come off that way when we shared at the beginning of class, but most days I wasn’t. I had my good days when I felt a pep in my step, but most days I didn’t. I struggled with thoughts and feelings of “what if..?” What if we didn’t spend our 20’s doing enough “without responsibilities”? What if we should have waited? Would we really be in a different place in a few years? Would we have saved more, been better set up for this? Maybe, maybe not. I felt like I was mourning our relationship as I knew it, even though I felt confident having a baby would only make us a stronger couple. I would think of Adam one day coaching the t-ball team and smile. The daydreams like that came as often as the not-so-happy ones. I don’t know if it was the fatigue and stress of it all, or if it was some form of pre-partum depression. I didn’t feel the excitement I thought I should. That being said, I knew I would be enthralled the second we met him. I kept up hope that we would return to our lives, but our lives + 1. We would get back to the things we loved to do that we couldn’t because my body was so different. We would get to meet our little man soon, and we would figure out how to be parents. 

The end of the bitter end

With one week left, I feel a sense of calm and zen and I haven't experienced before. The pain, fatigue, swelling, etc., have just become my normal state of being. I get through the day noticing contractions but not really paying much attention to them (obviously, they aren't that strong). My hips have been aching so badly for so long that it's just another thing. The anxiety has leveled off. Maybe it's just because I'm tired, but I'm basically just chilled out and waiting for things to start. I'm cherishing the rest of my time with just me and him. Ask me again once my water breaks, I may feel differently.

Other Stuff

Slowing down and watching the world fly by

Pregnancy really slows you down. For me, it was mostly physically, but sometimes also mentally. I’m normally a pretty fast-paced person. I multi-task, I manage a lot at work and in our family/personal lives. I definitely think I’m laid back, I know I can sit on the beach and read a book for 6 hours straight. I enjoy my time on the couch doing nothing. The difference is that I would choose when to slow down, and now pregnancy made that choice for me. There were so many times I wanted to do more; clean up the house more, go for a hike, go skiing, walk to the bathroom with ease, etc. In the last week or two I really screeched to a halt. You watch the world keep flying by you, hurried people wearing cute flats, as you slowly put one foot in front of the other.

Setting up the room

To me, setting up the nursery was simultaneously a chore and a pleasure. I like having systems for things. I’ve moved many times, and I enjoy setting up the house and my room. That’s because I’ve done it a billion times and I know my systems. I don’t know baby things. I don’t know the best set up. I don’t know what will work for us and what won’t. I found myself sitting among a pile of teething toys, bath products, diapers, wipes, onesies, cute little shoes, waterproof sheets, wondering how to organize it all. I actually got up and put away my own laundry, because at least I knew where that went. Once we figured out some rhyme or reason to the room it became easier. I would avoid the nursery knowing we still had work to do, but the other day I poked my head in and said “huh! It’s coming along! Good thing…” (38 weeks along).

Panic, no matter what you "know"
I can’t tell you how many times I heard the words “Call us if contractions get strong, don’t ease up with rest or water, and are happening frequently. Call if you get a big gush of fluid.” You’ll know all of these things, but you’ll still freak out over Braxton-Hicks (is it the REAL THING?!), you’ll freak out with random discharge (did I just pee? Was it discharge? Is my water leaking?). A third-time-mom in my prenatal yoga class has been having contractions for days and said “I’m not bothering to call my midwife yet”. I kind of get that now, because I had contractions over the course of a few weeks, but I don’t think any first-timer can have that lackadaisical approach as they get close to their due date and things seem to be *happening*.

Final Thoughts

I can't have final thoughts on the pregnancy because it's not over yet. The third trimester has been a series of ups and downs (I guess much like the other two). The last month hijacks your brain and makes it hard to remember what the other weeks were like. It took me 15 minutes to write those three sentences, and now I'm lost. I'll leave it at that, because that's about the best summary of the third trimester I can give... especially at 39 weeks.

The Black Hole of Your Baby Registry

Setting up a baby registry is both exhilarating and absolutely torturous. 

Adam and I made a random stop to Babies 'R Us because we happened to be in the area and I really wanted to park in the "expectant mothers" parking spots. I was determined to do that as many times as I could throughout my pregnancy (pro tip: it rarely ever happens). We had no intention of setting up our registry that day, we just wanted to browse around and see what was out there. A nice sales associate approached us as we gazed at a wall of 1,500 different bed sets and asked if we needed help, or if we were setting up our registry. Do we need help? Yes, in the worst way, but also no thank you we are just looking. Are we setting up our registry? Nope, just looking. Then Adam suggested maybe we should just start it. Why not? Quickly, we entered the foreign world that is BABY SHOPPING. Bum bum BUMMMMMMMMM........ 

The nice sales associate took us to the registry desk and got us set up with a printed out list that broke things down by section, and by "must haves" and "nice to haves", plus the scanner. You would think that would make things easy. Here's a list of exactly what we need! Great! WRONG. Never seen a registry shopping list? Here, take a freakin' gander - http://www.toysrus.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=17082946

Our bed set is pretty freakin' cute. Good choice, us.

I thought I was a good shopper. Just start in a section and work your way through the list. Ask the nice people for help. Easy enough. Except for the fact that every single section had a million different options, and we have no clue what we were doing. We pride ourselves on being pretty self-sufficient, frugal, doing things with minimal "stuff", but I swear that scanner beeped every 6 seconds. In my panic, I basically had Adam scan just about everything because I had no idea what we really needed. There were "fun" things like the cute bedding set we picked out, then there were nightmares like the bottle/nipple aisle. Who knew there were 100 different "flows" of nipples, so many sized bottles, so many options? What about what that total stranger said - that you never know which one the baby will like so you shouldn't buy every kind right away? But what about the list... the list says we should 6-10 bottles in each size, with all different types of nipples to correspond? I think I'm going to pass out? Why are these so expensive? Please help me?

Of COURSE I need cute washcloths, WOMAN!

Things really came to a head in the "bathing" aisle. We had been trying to decipher what on the "must-have" list was really a must-have, and one of those questions was washcloths. I turned to Adam and asked, "do babies really need special washcloths?" It wasn't rhetorical, I truly didn't know, and it seemed like something I should know. I almost burst into tears in the middle of the aisle, feeling like a total failure as a mother because I didn't know if my baby would need washcloths with little elephants printed on them. Thankfully I held it together, but I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time a hormonal pregnant woman cried in Babies 'R Us.

At some point we looked at each other and agreed that we should have invited my mom, or potentially any other woman on earth that has had an actual baby. We needed the wisdom and guidance of someone with one iota of knowledge, and we needed them with us. I had talked to other moms about what was necessary and what wasn't, but it all fell out of my pregnancy brain. We didn't PREPARE for this trip, you can't expect me to remember anything important.

In the end, we survived, and I learned some lessons along the way. Our full registry is still online for anyone else that wants to look at it, but here are the major takeaways:

• Get anything and everything you can from other people.
• People want to buy your baby clothes. Put a few things on the registry, especially if you want to buy them at a discount later (I know you can at Babies 'R Us, not sure about other places). Don't bother buying a lot, because you'll get so many hand-me-downs you'll need another dresser to store it all.
• A dresser works as a "changing table". 
• A glider/rocker is 100% necessary.
• There are 400 billion car seats out there. Get two car seats if you have two cars. We got one "travel system" which has an infant car seat that clicks directly in to our stroller, and one "forever" car seat that goes from infant --> booster. 
• Don't go crazy on toys, baby will get these for every single birthday. A few infant toys are probably fine.
• Do your research about breast pumps/breastfeeding needs. Ask your friends/family. Ask your coworkers, especially if you plan on pumping at work. They're the ones who can give you the best advice on what to get if you want to pump at work. 
• START EARLY! I got my breast pump with a coupon way in advance - I didn't want such a personal purchase to be done by someone else. We also asked for baby-related things for other holidays and got some of the "big stuff" out of the way. 
• Get lots of different sized diapers. I don't know how our babe will be, but we got a variety of brands and sizes of diapers and wipes. 
• Don't forget "safety stuff" - first aid, gates for stairs, plugs for the electric sockets, cabinet stoppers, etc. Sure, they may not be crawling around yet, but why not have someone else buy that stuff for you now? 
• Gift cards are really the golden ticket.

People want to buy cute things for babies. This includes clothes (#1), anything with an adorable pattern or quote on it (bibs, receiving blankets, wash clothes, burp clothes, etc), books, toys, the list goes on. Get the bare essentials on your list and then add on anything you want a discount on later. Don't be surprised when the "bare essentials" are actually a lot of things. Somehow, a 7 pound human that cannot exist without your care does actually need quit a lot. I guarantee you people will buy you a plethora of colorful, cute baby stuff and it will all be great, but you'll also be really happy someone got you waterproof changing pad liners (less cute). People don't always go practical on baby gifts, but those are the ones I got most excited about. Breast pump accessory kit? HELL YEAH!

As I said, gift cards are the golden ticket. We had a lot, I mean A LOT, of gifts at our baby shower, but we still had a lot, again a LOT, to buy off the registry afterward. We "completed" our registry when I was about 36 weeks along, and I was more tired and stressed out than the first go-around. It was amazing to have all of these gifts and have so much of what we needed, but it felt like there was still a mountain of stuff to buy. The gift cards were a miracle, and we didn't spend a dime when buying the rest of what we needed. The receipt nearly gave Adam and a heart attack, but the 10% registry completion discount + 20% off coupon promotion + gift cards made it all okay. Everyone, breathe a sigh of relief with me.

.... Until you need to unpack and organize it all...

The Golden Era

The second trimester promised to be the golden era, and a lot of times it didn't feel like it. Now here I am, 37+ weeks along, and I realize that the second trimester really was the promised land. Why, you ask?

THE SECOND TRIMESTER

You’ll read this a lot – the second trimester is the best. You’re over the morning sickness and you’re not a gigantic manatee yet. That’s mostly true, but one of the things I was disappointed about was that no magic switch flipped when I hit the second trimester. I knew it probably wouldn’t, but I was so over being sick and tired that I really wanted my life to just be different because the clock struck 14 weeks. It didn’t. I didn’t really start to feel better until 16ish weeks, and I wasn’t fully back at it until about 18 weeks. That being said, 16-27 weeks was a pretty good time. As I mentioned, I wasn’t huge yet but I was getting noticeably pregnant, which is neat. I got my personality and energy back, and we did fun things like set up our baby registry. The act of setting it up was not that fun (more on that later), but the idea of it was. Hitting the halfway mark is simultaneously thrilling and daunting – Halfway there! I have to do this all over again? 20 more weeks? Really?.

I didn't experience quite as many symptoms as I did in the first trimester, but of course there were a few notable things:

Dizziness –Dizziness/vertigo is common in the second trimester because of the increase in the amount of blood in your body and a lower blood pressure (heart pumps more blood but blood vessels dilate, lowering your blood pressure). There also more pressure on your veins and blood doesn’t get to your brain as quickly. I didn’t feel this until I stood up too fast in the nail polish aisle of Wal*Mart and had to grab Adam’s arm in order to not hit the floor. (~17 weeks).

Round ligament pain – The Internet tells you that round ligament pain is sharp, caused by sneezing or moving too quickly. This is true, and I certainly have been doubled over clutching my lady areas for 15 seconds after sneezing. For me, though, it’s also a usually a dull, achy all day pain that radiates from my groin up through my lower abdomen and to my back.

 

Back pain  - I have back pain when not pregnant, but the bigger I got the more pain I had. It was persistent by the 20 week mark. Not a whole lot you can do to prevent this. I did see a chiropractor near the end of my second trimester, and it was helpful. I didn't keep up with it because it was expensive and I felt kind of pressured to go all the time.

See? Look how content!

Sleeping becomes uncomfortable - Your belly pops out, you can no longer sleep on your back or stomach, and WHAM-O, there goes your comfort. I guess it depends on how you slept before pregnancy, but even if you were a side sleeper I promise you'll start to get uncomfortable. I could feel my belly pulling down toward the bed (it was too small to reach on its own, but big enough to have its own weight). Do yourself a favor and get a Snoogle. Your partner will hate it, but you will love it. 

The Milestones

• I felt the first kick around 15-16 weeks, which is pretty early. This is even more surprising because I have an anterior placenta, meaning my placenta sits at the front of my uterus between baby and the world. It usually "mutes" the kicks.

  

  Every. Time.

• We got to hear the heartbeat on the Doppler at 16 weeks, which was amazing since we only ever saw it fluttering on our first ultrasound. 
• "Anatomy scan" - aka what's in between those legs? Should people buy frilly skirts or socks with trucks on them? We did our anatomy scan at 19 weeks. I always had mild anxiety before ultrasounds because I was afraid something would be wrong, but ours were always fine. 
• Actually functioning like a person, most of the time. After 18 weeks I was pretty much "normal", all things considered. I just had growing pains, but my energy and pizzazz was the closest it's been to my usual self.

Other Things

Maternity clothes – At some point, you'll need to switch to maternity clothes in the second trimester unless you're a freak of nature (I say that with love and envy). From what I gather, maternity clothes used to be on fashion suicide. Well, my friends, that is not the case any more. Maternity clothes are amazing these days. There’s nothing worse than squeezing into uncomfortable jeans for a long day of terribleness, and I'm happy to report that maternity jeans are much more comfortable than normal jeans. I'm not sure I want to go back to normal waistbands. I was 100% in maternity jeans by 20 weeks, and really wished I had done so before then (maybe around 17-18 weeks). In fact, after I really popped it was so uncomfortable to wear tight pants that it sometimes made me nauseous. I liked the over-the-belly stretchy panels because I felt like it smoothed out my tummy and supported me throughout the day. Maternity tops are also really cute, most of mine are things I will be able and willing to wear when I’m not pregnant. 

I managed to somehow have a muffin top AND pregnant belly

Let me tell you something, though. The sales people will advise that you'll buy your "pre-pregnancy size" for maternity clothes throughout your pregnancy. You may grow out your maternity pants no matter what the nice salesperson tells you. My "medium" sizes maternity pants still "fit", I guess, but I have a lot of swelling in my lower legs and those skinny jeans are not ideal. I wish I had a size up for the last ~6 weeks, but I refuse to buy more pairs. 

Maternity Support Belt – You may want to give up on looking stylish and just commit to a maternity support belt. This will probably happen around 30 weeks or so. The support belt I got wrapped around my back and under my belly (above my belt line). That little bit of support made a WORLD of difference for my back and menstrual-type cramps in the front. You may start to feel a “pulling” sensation at the front, bottom of your belly, and a maternity belt can really help that uncomfortable feeling.

In conlcusion... the second trimester really was the "best", all things considered. Sure, I get the real prize at the end of the third trimester, but it's just plain difficult to be so freakin' huge. My only regret is not being more active in the second trimester, because that's when I could have mitigated some of my weight gain and just enjoyed life a little more. The grass is always greener, am I right?