the STUPENDOUS second trimester
With the second trimester comes the easing of the nausea, and a seemingly endless jar of energy! I didn’t feel completely at ease that everything was alright until we reached the 24 week mark (by which point the baby is viable earthside), but it was nice to be able to relax a little after the dating scan.
Things to look forward to include:
- The scans where you get to see an actual human shaped baby growing and doing somersaults around your belly! Ours was quite the acrobat on screen. As a gift to Ryan for his 31st birthday I booked us a private scan and he was honoured enough to get a wave from the baby.
- Lots of energy! I spent most of this trimester - re-painting our entire house, de-cluttering and nesting to the extreme. Naps went out the window and after 20 weeks when my nausea settled I felt like a superwoman.
- Those wonderful kicks. I was lucky enough to start feeling kicks at 16 weeks. The sensation changes throughout pregnancy, but in the beginning the best way I can describe it is as though two dominoes are lined up in your tummy and as they fall over, one taps against your belly. It was a very rapid, if-you-weren’t-paying-attention-you-would-miss-it kind of sensation, sometimes only once a day. It continued like that for a while, until a few weeks later the kicking became more noticeable. I pestered Ryan for weeks trying to get him to hold his hand on my belly so he could feel, and each time he’d finally give up and say, ‘ be patient, I’ll be able to feel it soon enough. Just enjoy it.’ For a while, it was like having my own little personal joke, as the dog barking loudly at the postman or the sound of music set off a sequence of kicks causing me to laugh out loud.
- Your belly button changes from an inny to outy. Just warning you – you do not need to be a hypochondriac like me and convince yourself you have an umbilical hernia… this is a completely normal part of pregnancy. As my mother firmly informed me when I rang her on her holiday in a panic!
Unfortunately for us the second trimester wasn’t completely peaches and cream. Besides drinking gallons of Gaviscon and stockpiling enough chewable tablets for my handbag that I could start my own pharmacy, I was hospitalised with hyperemesis twice and my nausea hung around until 20 weeks. The first episode of hyperemesis took me completely by surprise as I was leaving hospital one day, resulting in three bouts of projectile vomiting all over my steering wheel and dashboard on my drive home when I didn’t pull over quick enough. Classic. On the brightside the vomit was bright pink as I had been drinking one of Ryan’s grapefruit mocktails the night before. Once I had started I just couldn’t stop though, and I continued to vomit over 30 times in the space of 12 hours, only stopping when a doctor arrived at our house at 4am, injected my butt with cyclizine and phoned an ambulance as I was so severely dehydrated. Can I just say – firstly vomiting that much is incredibly exhausting, I have incredible respect for women who suffer with hyperemesis the entire way through their pregnancy. Secondly, nothing prepared me for the oesophagitis I was to experience the following day after being so forcefully sick, it was almost worse than the vomiting! If you are in the same boat, wake up, take some paracetamol, your anti-emetic and down some gaviscon pronto! I was certainly much better prepared the second time around!
All in all though I feel incredibly blessed that we have made it this far in the pregnancy with very little to complain about, and a completely healthy baby. I feel as though I am accomplishing the most amazing thing just by respecting my body to do its thing. I turned thirty this year and got to celebrate surrounded by loving friends and with my little cub curled up inside me. Being pregnant is like carrying a friend around with you all the time… and even though the ever-expanding bump can seem to grow at an alarming rate, I keep reminding myself that I am lucky (not everyone is able to experience this) and to continually feel thankful.
