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As I sit here on my couch, eating pizza and binge watching Riverdale I am simultaneously sitting in shock that my second trimester has ended. These past three months flew by! I can happily say that my second trimmest was better than my first. By better I mean that I didn’t suffer from all day long morning sickness. However, I did experience other unpleasant symptoms that took its place. This trimester overall may have been better, but don’t be fooled, it came with its ups and downs. Physical changes on my body, changes and fluctuations with my mental and emotional health, and overall changes that come with preparing for a baby.
Have I ever been insecure about my body? YES! It happens to be that I was finally starting to reach a confident place again before I got pregnant. I was working out more intensely and saw my body finally toning up after birth control added some extra cushion. Do not mistake me wanting to tone up MY body for being body exclusive… I truly believe all woman of all shapes and sizes are beautiful. I personally felt my best, healthiest and most confident when I got engaged/before I started birth control. Once I was finally hitting goals with my personal trainer, Abby - @abbswithabsfitness, I got pregnant! When I started working out with her I told her she will not see me pregnant before I hit my goal with her… well, that plan changed! The start of my second trimester had me feeling SO insecure. The extra hormones circulating my body were visibly adding more cushion but at the start of this trimester until I would say midway through, I hadn’t started showing. An employee in my Husband’s office approached me during this time and said “Girl, are you tryna gain weight?” “No… not really.” “Oh… well you’re looking heavier”. I knew I was pregnant, she did not. Regardless if a woman is pregnant or not I think I can say most of us wouldn’t want to hear that. That when the insecurities started really creeping up. Halfway through the trimester I popped and had a little belly and with each passing week my bump has only been getting bigger. I have felt more confident since the middle of my second trimester. I personally don’t see a ‘glow’ or feel one but I have started to appreciate just how magnificent a woman’s body is. During this trimester my doctor told me I gained pretty much the maximum I should to be considered a healthy amount & instructed me to drink more water, eat better, and get moving! That didn’t boost my confidence but I chose to not let it get me too down. I will try my best and hopefully it will all workout! Afterall, whenever I have hormones added into my system I gain weight. I feel like they’re almost chanting inside me “Gain more weight! Gain more weight!”. I can’t complain too much though, I’m very grateful that both My baby and Myself are healthy – nothing beats that! Aside from expanding, I have experienced other physical changes and symptoms. Some I have accepted gracefully and others I will occasionally catch myself thinking about sporting a ‘stink face’. Acid reflux is my newest enemy! I have medication to help make it less intense but when I forget to take it before eating WOAH! I feel like there is a fire burning my insides from my belly button up to my ears. I also experience spontaneous leg cramping which will have me wake up screaming bloody murder some nights… sorry Mo! Most nights though I really don’t get enough sleep due to kicks to my rib cage, restless legs, back pain, acid reflux and the sensation of my arms going numb atter 7 minutes of laying on my side. I know, I sound like a dream! To help me get more comfortable I sleep in a pillow fortress… I’m not kidding. Each time I have to get up to pee in the middle of the night I pretty much climb the mount Everest of pillows. I have two normal pillows…. a 12 inch back wedge pillow to help with reflux, a C shaped pregnancy pillow AND a U shaped pregnancy pillow. Is there such thing as becoming a crazy pillow lady? If not, there should be! Emotionally I’ve simply been overwhelmed! I’m an anxious person and change is NOT my friend. Mind you, after a change occurs and I am experiencing the beauty of that change, I love it! The unknown of the outcome beforehand and stretching past my comfort zone can have me feeling paralyzed. Toward the end of my second trimester I started to realize just how soon I was going to have my baby, god willing, in my arms. My mind exploded at the idea. What do I do with a tiny human? The hospital will actually let us leave with our baby and trust us to take care of it? Why do they believe I can? I don’t believe I can! I panicked and with that panic came a lot of tears. Besides for the dynamic change in my family going from two to three, there are smaller changes that also have a huge impact. We changed our car from my beloved Jeep Wrangler to a Family friendly Honda Pilot. As fun as my Jeep was, I know it’s not a passenger friendly car and the thought of putting my baby in the back seat of such an aggressively rocky ride made me choose to give it up. Logically it was the best decision to make, but it was still SO hard. I already had to change the ways I eat, exercise and approach self-care – nothing crazy, basic changes when you become pregnant. Now I had to give up my car and suddenly I felt like there were so many more adventure on the horizon that my Jeep needed to take us on and felt deeply sad when the decision was finalized. Then I started looking around my one bedroom apartment and realized that one day we’ll grow out of it, which is wonderful!!!, but I love my apartment so much and the thought of leaving this comfortable space we created makes my heart ache. There are many moments where I feel so excited and happy about becoming a first time mom. I’m over joyed to share the experience of parenthood with my best friend. We both love feeling our baby’s kicks and more subtle movements and seeing the pictures after our routine appointments. Somedays the whole starting parenthood idea slips our mind and other days it slams into us like an 18 wheeler truck on the freeway. Navigating my mental and emotional health during this time has been challenging but I’m so grateful for my therapist because she really keeps me accountable and in tune with my feelings which has helped immensely. I still have not warmed up to the idea of pregnancy as a whole. I’d do it again, but it isn’t the most wonderful experience in the world. I’d do it again because well… babies… they’re pretty cute! As I get closer and closer to the big day I am 100% freaking out at the idea of labor. I’m just getting used to the baby being inside me part and thinking of how a baby can possibly make its way outside me… simply said disgusts me and has me cringing for days. I know it possible… I know babies are born every single day but you cannot convince me labor and delivery is beautiful. It sounds traumatic to me. I am VERY excited to hold my little one for the first time but every moment from when labor starts until my baby is in my arms I cannot think about for too long. I just focus on the adorable little face from my sonograms and picture holding my baby to get past my fears. Good news: I’ll have to face those fears soon and might get over them. Bad news: I’ll have to face those fears soon and might not get over them! Stay tuned for the third and final trimester! It will be over pretty soon… and I’m sure, just like the previous two, it won’t be boring!
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Motherhood is around the corner for me and as I was making my Baby Registry I found myself overwhelmed by the checklist of items we ‘need’. Being that I am currently living in a one bedroom apartment I’m trying to avoid falling down the rabbit hole of cute baby items and purchasing or putting items on my registry that we really don’t need… or worse, items that wont last us a long time. So I reached out to my awesome and super reliable Insta with some questions and they did not disappoint!! I’ll be sharing all the recommended items for Baby and Mom’s Post Partum care below. In a different post I will create a hospital-Qwsx t3 packing list for Mom, Baby & Dad. Enjoy!
Must Have Baby Items: Bedroom/Sleep:
Here is a link for most of these items: https://www.amazon.com/shop/modestisthenewblack?listId=HIOTL95UB3AN&ref=idea_share_inf Must Have Postpartum Care Items: Sanity:
https://www.amazon.com/shop/modestisthenewblack?listId=1ZXFHRK4KGPCJ&ref=idea_share_inf What a journey this has been... so far! I’m currently in my 24th week of pregnancy which places me in month 6. Before I start even describing my first trimester I have to preface whatever I say with the following:
Pregnancy comes with A LOT of unknown. Especially if you’re experiencing your first pregnancy, which I am. I don’t think that any book, insta mom-blogger page, or app could have properly prepared ME for what my experience would be like. Keep in mind, with all of this being new and unknown, the world was going through a pandemic. For me, the unknown puts my anxiety in high gear. So whatever normal anxiety I would have experience just from being pregnant was heightened because the whole world was in chaos. Now let’s get to the good stuff... and by good I mean the most dreadful first few months of 2020. I found out I was pregnant on January 31st, 2020. It was a Thursday and as I was ending my work day I was struck my this intense feeling of nausea I’ve never experienced before. My boss told me my face looked green. I felt green too. When I feel nauseous my entire world starts falling apart. I start hyperventilating because I might throw up- which is the worst possible thing in the world- I get all hot and flushed. I feel like I have one foot in the depths of hell and one foot in a freezer. Everything feels wrong. I sat at my desk and sipped on some cold water before heading home. I lived 8 minutes from my office at the time and I drive a Jeep Wrangler. In those 8 minutes I promise the road was bumpier than any other day and I was crying out to god from the depths of my soul to forgive my sins - this was enough torture. I walked through my apartment and when I walked in I got a whiff of fried chicken fingers and immediately needed to eat them all. I don’t know about you, but when I’m normally nauseous I cannot smell, look or see anything. I knew something was off when I couldn’t resist eating chicken of all things when I was nauseous. At 11:30pm I went to the bathroom and performed the coolest Magic trick out there. I peed on a stick and at 11:35pm two pink lines appeared. I stared at those lines in shock for about 10 minutes. Then after having my own “OMG. oh my god. OHH. MYYY. GAWDDD.” moment I brought that stick out to the living room and showed my Husband. It took Mo about 10 seconds of staring at it to register that We were pregnant and when he realized he couldn’t stop cheering! I had a grace period for about 3-4 weeks. Two of those weeks I didn’t know I was pregnant yet. The last week I only had the symptoms of my entire chest being sore like never before. After the first 3-4 weeks past by I got slammed with exhaustion that felt like I was carrying a ton of bricks on my back. Then suddenly around week 6 We added on the nausea. I don’t know why but my body felt the need to not let it go once the afternoon hit. My body didn’t know the term “morning sickness” my body decided to sign up for a subscription of “all day every single day” nausea. For the next 3 months you wouldn’t find me at work. You would barely see me in a grocery store. You wouldn’t see me working out anymore. Family and friends hardly saw me. I only existed hunched over our toilet, laying on the bathroom floor crying that this needs to end, sleeping on the couch most nights (bc I have a fear that I’ll have to vomit and won’t make it in time and will accidentally vomit on Mo- also I know that this probably isn’t logical thinking), and laying on the floor of our dining room. All I could stomach eating was saltines, salty pretzels, sour candy chews, lemon wedges and pizza bagels. All I drank pretty much for 3 months was 95% ginger ale and 5% water. Emotionally I was a horror story. I cried over everything. An Uber driver asked me how my day was after work and I just started sobbing and didn’t stop the whole way home. I cried because my pizza bagels were so good. I cried because I was nausea. I cried because I was happy. I cried when I saw a cute video. If someone texted me “Hi” or “thinking about you” I. LOST. IT. I mostly cried because I couldn’t control crying and was crying about things I didn’t want to cry about. Whatever years I spend harboring my feelings or keeping things to myself - I made up for it all in 3 months. When I was finally feeling more like myself physically I was ready to go back to work and Covid-19 broke out. We were all told to stay home. My doctor told me it’s very new and I shouldn’t go out or see people. I was ready to go out and be human again. I was excited to socialize and work!!! Man plans, god laughs. Mentally at this point I was spiraling. The hormones flooding my system never helped me. Not on birth control and not from being pregnant. My anxiety was higher and more debilitating that ever before and I felt depression creeping up on me. The issue with that was any form of self care or stress relief I practiced before this time, I couldn’t because I was either pregnant or Covid-19 placed even more restrictions. I am so happy to be pregnant and was during this time despite all these side effects. Feeling anxious or depressed and also feeling grateful and happy was so conflicting for me. You also begin to see your body change and nothing feels worse than when you’re in the in between stages or showing. It’s like growing your hair out from a Pixie or Bob haircut. There are a few inches between hair lengths and styles that just put you in a bad place. The first trimester was my own personal hell. I was SO happy but it felt so distant from me. I felt like it was buried under all the gross & distasteful symptoms, body changes, and mood swings. I have to say that at 24 weeks I am in a whole different place and feeling more myself. As much as I can feel myself, never did this growing a human thing before. It’s been exciting and scary getting to know my body and myself as a pregnant woman. I think all the changes and the way the body works to create a child are fascinating as well as gross. It’s truly a miracle and has me awe-struck but I simultaneously feel we can do without a lot of the side effects and strange changes. That’s just me though, some woman LOVE pregnancy. ALL. OF. PREGNANCY. I am simply not that kinda Gal. I just keep my focus on the cute sonogram pictures and imagining holding our baby for the first time. That seems to help make this all a little more tolerable! |
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