Last week was the first week of the third trimester! And it also went very differently than anticipated.
I’ve felt as if I’m on the verge of a cold for about three weeks. Every morning, I wake up with a slightly sore throat, and then it eventually goes away. But last Wednesday, I also felt achy and chilly and generally terrible. So, after my first meeting of the day I took the day off in hopes of napping off whatever illness was making its way through my body.
But I couldn’t sleep until like 11pm. I was just achy and uncomfortable and exhausted on the couch all day. Jack also aggravated an old neck injury the same day. So, our grand plans for getting lots of housework done last week pretty much disappeared.
Thursday, I thought I’d power through work, but Jack and my manager both convinced me to take another day. Again, I assumed I’d sleep a bunch and feel better, but I couldn’t sleep until about 3pm.
After that nap, though, I did feel significantly better. My mom came over to drop off a COVID test because we couldn’t find one anywhere near us, and I took it after dinner. It came back negative, so I decided I’d keep my weekend plans.
I’d already planned to take Friday and Monday off work, since we had a full weekend, so I ended up off for almost a week.
I took Friday morning pretty slowly since I wasn’t feeling 100% yet. The dogs and I went for a long, slow walk, and then I did a light workout and got lots of Ben cuddles on the couch. On Friday night, we went to my dad’s early 50th birthday party and ate delicious Italian food made by one of his good friends.
On Saturday, I went to my baby shower, hosted by my lovely friend Hayley.
Jack and I are absolutely blown away by our friends’ & family members’ generosity; we had to utilize my aunt’s expert mom-of-three car-packing skills to get everything loaded into my mom’s car in one trip.
On Sunday, we rested up after both sleeping poorly and then went to a friend’s wedding.
And then on Monday, we finally got back to house projects. I finished priming the walls in the guest room and Jack finished sanding the guest room trim. We plan to paint and stain this week, and will try to move onto the nursery trim in the next couple weeks. So, scratch what I said last week about getting both rooms done by the end of October. Let’s go with mid-November.
Previous Updates
I’m Pregnant! + The First Trimester
At 27 weeks pregnant, baby girl is supposedly the length of a head of cauliflower.
Symptoms
My hunger has felt pretty normal and maybe even a little reduced this week. I’ve also been intermittently nauseated and headachy, which is unpleasant, but as I mentioned, I had a bug of some sort.
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, except for after I stood in the guest room priming the walls for a whole afternoon. My hips were super achy after that.
I have to pee a whole lot, and I definitely can feel baby girl kick/hit my bladder regularly.
I’m still sleeping pretty well and a lot. I’m enjoying the sleep while it lasts, since I’m assuming it’ll get scarcer as little girl gets bigger. Sometimes I get glimpses into this. 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 2am. The other part is that my mind starts racing with everything we still want to do before she’s born.
For both my shower and the wedding on Sunday, I thought I’d go with flowy dresses, but both my options still looked a little too tent-like, so I embraced my bump and wore more fitted dresses.
Baby girl is especially active whenever I’m sitting down for an extended period of time, particularly after I eat. I read that she shouldn’t be responding to a meal until ~2 hours after I’ve eaten it, but that doesn’t seem true. Jack can feel her move whenever, and we’re pretty sure she responds to his voice and touch. You can often see my belly flutter with her movements.
Food
My diet is still pretty much my normal, plus snacks. I made this super versatile pork that we love early last week, and we ate it as sandwiches, salads, and ramen last week and then froze what was left. We also had more takeout / meals out than usual last week since we were both not feeling well and had lots of weekend plans. And then we made chili and a double batch of cornbread to start off this week!
Aside from that, I’ve had a lot of apples, pears, peanut butter, skyr, cottage cheese, and dates. We’ve also been making our way through a pint of Graeter’s Dark Chocolate Brownie and leftover Nothing Bundt Cakes from my shower.
Exercise
Since I was sick, I took most of last week off of working out. I used to follow the “as long as you aren’t having symptoms below your neck, you’re good to work out” rule, but have found I get over illnesses way faster if I actually rest when even a little sick. How novel. And in any case, I was having symptoms below the neck. My whole body ached.
I still squeezed my Expecting and Empowered pregnancy guide workouts into the last few days, but dialed back the intensity a little since I still wasn’t feeling 100%. I am the worst at doing the flexibility and pelvic floor stuff, but I did some of it as I was easing back into working out.
Stories
I mentioned we both slept poorly on Saturday night and it was totally little girl’s fault. Wherever she was hanging out in my belly was not comfy and somehow made me nauseated. We both tried to rub her into a better position, but it took about two and a half hours before she moved enough for me to get comfortable and fall back to sleep.
I said last week I’m at the point where strangers can tell I’m pregnant, but the lady who did my blowout on Friday did a double take when I told her I had my baby shower this weekend, and several people were surprised at the wedding. So, maybe I’m not quite there yet.
