My Second Trimester

Week 12-16

If you have read my earlier post about my first trimester, you will know how awful those three months were for me. I kept holding onto the thought that by week 12 I might feel normal, while trying to ignore that some people had told me the sickness and tiredness could last the whole pregnancy for some women! Apparently on average, the nasty symptoms ease off by week 16, and thankfully mine started to go at week 14. I began to get some energy back, and then the nausea started to reduce so that I was no longer having it all day every day. By week 16 I felt a lot better.

Now don’t get me wrong, even to this day I still throw up from time to time, and it tends to be after I have eaten breakfast (cereal), but this only tends to happen once every couple of weeks. Thankfully I am now more able to function on a day to day basis!

During this first part of my second trimester, my stomach and bowels started to feel odd. I was going to the toilet only once a day (sorry too much information) and it was only ever in the mornings, so I tended to feel tight, bloated and full in the evenings.

On a nicer note, at week 14 I began to feel the odd flutter (feels a bit like trapped wind) and on one particular day at work, I was sitting at my desk and suddenly felt three pokes inside my tummy above my belly button. Everything I have read has said that flutters are common at this time, but kicks don’t begin until at least week 16, so to this day I’m baffled. But after those three taps, it wasn’t until I was 16 weeks that I had proper kicks again, and each one made me smile.

Week 16- 24

Once the kicks had started, they didn’t happen very often, but because the baby is so small at this stage, they tend to move about a lot, so there can be times they face certain ways that mean we don’t feel any kicks, while other times we feel them a lot.

I could go days without feeling a kick at this point, but was reassured by the midwife that the daily kicks wouldn’t be happening until at least week 24 when the baby would be a bit bigger.

Apart from the kicks, I had little symptoms at this point, apart from the one I am still struggling with now: HORMONES. I really noticed a shift in my hormones in the second trimester, and it all began with tiny things really starting to bug me. I remember watching the Bloke put his cup down on the table without a coaster, and I felt a huge urge to scream at him and give him a slap. This usually would not cause that reaction! The only way I can explain it, is that it feels like the hormones have magnified made all the parts of my personality. So things that usually would slightly niggle me, now make me furious, and things that I might find a little sad on TV now make me cry by the bucket load.

This is probably the hardest thing I have had to deal with in the pregnancy, because it is the one thing that affects the people around me. A lot of the time I don’t realise I am doing it until afterwards, and when I try to tell the Bloke it is my hormones, I think he feels I am just using it as an excuse. I have literally got to the point where I have been so angry with myself because I don’t feel like me anymore. If you feel like this, my tip would be to keep reminding yourself that this won’t be forever, and after a few weeks/months you will have control over yourself again and you WILL be you again.

At week 18 I began to get a bit tired again, but on reflection I think this is when I caught a virus, because this lasted for 5 weeks and in the end I went to the hospital and they tested baby (who was fine) and noticed in my blood that I currently had a virus. This was week 23, and on the day I took this trip to the hospital, it was the first time I had seen the baby kick from the outside. He didn’t like the heart monitor they put on my belly, so tried to kick it off. It was amazing to see, but frustrating that every time he did it, the Bloke was too busy staring at the heart monitor to also see it!

Weeks 25-28

During the entire second trimester, I was still getting surging pains in my right buttock, that could come on when I got out of bed, when I walked or even when I was just sitting upright. As the baby has been getting heavier, this pain has increased, and the midwife feels that it could be pelvic girdle pain (PGP). The pain began very early on in the pregnancy, and as I have been getting heavier, it has been there more often.

I was referred to physio, and this will start in the third trimester.

Energy levels have dropped again, but this could be due to the increasing weight I have put on and the PGP.  The heartburn has reared its ugly head again, but tends to be just an annoying acidic feeling in the throat rather than the extremes that some people can have.

There had been times during these weeks that I had pains and cramps at night, which were possibly stretching pains, or the baby and sack moving higher up into my stomach.

Regular kicks started at this point, and the baby seemed to prefer kicking early in the morning and as I was going to bed. Most kicks feel lovely, and on week 27 the Bloke got to feel his first kick, but sometimes the kicks can make me feel quite sick or just hurt! I have been assured that in the next few weeks the kicks will hurt even more when he starts sticking his feet under my rib cage (oh joy).

In the final week of this trimester, the baby seemed to have a growth spurt, because my tummy suddenly seemed HUGE (along with my bum, face and thighs), and I was waddling more than ever.

During this whole trimester I was waiting for that “pregnancy glow” that would make me look healthy, happy and beautiful, but I seem to have been one of the unlucky ones that was instead blessed with the greasy, frizzy hair, pale complexion, puffy face and acne.

Oh the acne... it has been worse than the spots I had as a teenager! I have LOADS of spots on my forehead, chin, shoulders, chest and back. This does not do your self-esteem an awful lot of good, and my ever-increasing bum and thighs really are making my side view look horrendous.  There is also a tiny bit of clear liquid that can come out of my nipples from time to time, which could be the colostrum. Not everyone gets this, and thankfully I have not had it to the point that I have wet patches in my bras like some women get.

It doesn’t help when people comment on how big you have got, you really don’t want to hear it! Especially when they then end their sentence with: “I don’t envy you to be pushing that big boy out”. Thanks a lot!  And if you are one of the women who have the opposite problem of not looking pregnant, then you have to contend with people giving you flack for not looking pregnant enough. We can’t win!  And don’t even get me started on people that think they can just touch my belly because I am pregnant. I HATE THIS. I wouldn’t touch someone’s belly without asking, so why do manners go out the window for people when they know you’re pregnant?!

By this point, it is all becoming a bit too real, and the thought of labour is becoming a lot scarier. For these last couple of weeks I have been glued to pregnancy diaries on TV, and watching ‘One Born Every Minute’ on Channel 4 to find out what labour has been like for other women.

Whilst some of this has scared me beyond belief, it has also shown me what I am and am not prepared to have done, which is handy as I have now started to write my birth plan.

And now I have just entered trimester three, I wonder what other highs and lows I will experience. I will keep you all posted...

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