Today is the first day of my third trimester. How freaking crazy – and my baby shower is this weekend! So cool but so nuts.
It’s been another long week. It was full of work and work around the house, and we made even more progress on our pre-baby / general house to-do list, but everything takes longer than we expect. We had family over on Saturday to help out in the guest room and they managed to prep the (very rough and messy) walls for painting while Jack got to work on the baseboards in the nursery.
We also pivoted from sanding the baseboards on the walls to removing them and redoing them in the garage. I was afraid they’d snap because, frankly, they aren’t the nicest baseboards in the world, but Jack got all the ones in the guest room off with minor – and fixable – issues. He’ll do the nursery next.
I think we’ll have the guest room and the nursery cleaned up and mostly done in the next two weeks. Definitely by the end of October. And after that, almost everything else we get done before baby girl arrives is a bonus.
We also managed to have a very restful Sunday, which is usually a goal for us, and it was lovely. I think we each napped for three hours.
Previous Updates
I’m Pregnant! + The First Trimester
At 26 weeks pregnant, baby girl is supposedly the length of a head of lettuce.
Symptoms
Again, aside from yesterday, when I was a little extra hungry, my hunger has felt pretty normal this week. I’ve also been intermittently nauseated and headachy, which is unpleasant.
If I take aloe water, senna, and a stupid amount of magnesium, the constipation is manageable.
My sciatica has been a lot better this week, for no reason I can think of, but I’ll take it.
I have to pee a whole lot, and sometimes I think I can feel baby girl kick/hit my bladder.
My gums randomly stopped being irritated halfway through the week for no apparent reason. Some days they hurt, most days they don’t.
I’m still sleeping well and a lot. Like I said, my Sunday nap this week was 3 hours. I’m enjoying the sleep while it lasts, since I’m assuming it’ll get scarcer as little girl gets bigger. Sometimes I think I get glimpses into this. Now the transfer from the couch, where I often sleep from about 9pm to midnight, to bed, where I sleep from midnight to 5am, doesn’t go as smoothly as it used to and I end up awake for a bit. Part of this is probably because baby girl is distractingly active between 11pm and 1am.
I feel like this week is when I went from “my friends and family can tell I’m pregnant” to “random strangers can tell I’m pregnant.” At the very least, my belly has officially surpassed my boobs.
Baby girl is especially active in the evenings, but I feel her move throughout the day most days, particularly after I eat, even though I read that she shouldn’t be responding to a meal until ~2 hours after I’ve eaten it. Jack can feel her move most of the time, and we’re pretty sure she responds to his voice and touch. Sometimes you can see my belly flutter with her movements.
Food
My diet is still pretty much my normal, plus snacks. I made Chicken and Dumplings last Wednesday (again, with a ton of extra veggies), and then we ate leftovers and takeout all weekend. And then I made an elaborate menu that I promptly scrapped on Monday morning since there’s so much we want to get done around the house this week. It’s now Pork Week. I threw a 9.5lb pork shoulder into the slow cooker on Monday morning to make this super versatile pork that we love, and we’ll eat it in various forms all week. We made tacos on Monday and sandwiches with a side of roasted veggies on Tuesday.
Aside from that, I’ve had a lot of apples, pears, peanut butter, skyr, cottage cheese, bagels, and cheese and crackers. I also made brownies and pumpkin bread, so we’ve been making our way through those, too.
Exercise
I’m continuing to follow the Expecting and Empowered pregnancy guide, so that covers three of my workouts a week. I am the worst at doing the flexibility and pelvic floor stuff, so I am trying to make a couple additional “workouts” a week out of that, just so it gets done. It’s so important and also so boring.
Aside from that, I’ve mostly been walking the dogs once or twice a day and doing chores around the house.
Stories
I said I’m at the point where strangers can tell I’m pregnant, but the lady helping me get paint and stain this weekend didn’t realize I was pregnant till I told her we were working on the guest room and the nursery, and even then, she asked me how old my baby was. “Not born yet…”
But she has a 10-month old and said that she remembered what it was like when no one could tell she was pregnant.
When Ben curls up to my belly and I can feel baby girl kicking at the same time, it’s basically my favorite thing.
