Hello Friday: The End of the Second Trimester Honeymoon Feb27

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Hello Friday: The End of the Second Trimester Honeymoon

So, I guess I should have been suspicious of the high-energy Tuesday morning that I had upon my return from St. Louis. I bounced to my car and then I had lunch with my husband, and then the fatigue hit.

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Right before the honeymoon ended...

I came home, did a bunch of work, wrote, but by 10 o’clock, I was seriously dragging and I barely got Fierce and Nerdy too bed. Then the next day I went to work at 10am. By 3pm, my back and sides were hurting. I popped two Tylenol and asked the writer when the final version of the script would be ready.

On my way home, I wanted nothing more than to take a nap. Then my boss called to talk over a couple of important work issues. Another hour of conversation. At 5pm, I finally settled in for a nap, but then my friend and former Smithie roommate, Madeline, called. She’d just finished a photo shoot for her company downtown and traffic was terrible. Was I doing anything? Was it okay if she stopped by? I looked at the time. I still wanted a nap and I also needed to do my daily write, but I had very low-energy and since Madeline lives about an hour and a half a way, I rarely get to see her. “I’m not doing anything,” I said, “Just lying here.”

Madeline was dressed in a suit. She’s has an MBA and I guess I had realized in the back of my mind that she must wear suits for her marketing job, but I had never seen her in one. I looked down at my own maternity jeans, grey-shirt and second-hand maternity tank top and suddenly I felt very frumpy. Madeline wanted to walk, which I felt was a good idea since I had eaten terribly in St. Louis and hadn’t been making my prenatal yoga classes lately.

Dinner was nice, but I felt like bad company, because I was so tired. Eventually we walked back to my house with promises to try to see each other soon. When we hugged, I felt very, very pregnant.

I trudged upstairs, and the last thing I remember is filing a FaceBook update at 8pm that said I was going to take a half-hour nap and then watch Battlestar Galatica. Then I woke up at 3am. And Betty was doing calistethics. And my hips hurt. And even after I put a pillow under them, I couldn’t get back to sleep. And though I had drunk a ton of water on Wednesday, my mouth was dryer than a desert. And I didn’t have the energy to waddle downstairs to get some water. Plus, I still hadn’t put Fierce and Nerdy to bed, so I got up and tried to work on that. But the wireless was down.

A little bit of fitful sleep later, I got up early and took a shower. For some reason it felt like my stomach was twice the size it had been on Tuesday during my high energy morning. There was so much more of me to clean and mosturizing the bottoms of my feet was becoming harder and harder. Also, now I can only get my socks on if I bend my leg and put my ankle on my knee. Same goes for shoes.

On NPR they were doing a story about how all adults should get 30 minutes of exercise a day. I think it’s been a month since my last prenatal yoga class. There just doesn’t seem to be time for them anymore. I remind myself again to look into Netflix streaming and go downstairs to work on Fierce and Nerdy via the office Ethernet.

I managed to get two FaN items in before we had to leave for our 7:45am OB appointment.

“How’s everything going?” the doctor asked when he came in.

“She’s feeling really uncomfortable,” CH said for me. He had woken up at 4am to find me just sitting up in bed, b/c I couldn’t get back to sleep.

“Well, that’s to be expected,” the doctor answered with a smile.

Our doctor is a very nice man, but I sort of hated him at that moment. My back and sides hurt and my stomach felt full even though I hadn’t eaten yet. The doctor was very congratulatory during the ultrasound. Betty was still a girl. And she was so big, she could no longer be captured on one super-grainy sonogram. “It looks like you have a very healthy baby,” the doctor said.

That made me happy.

Also, according to him, my weight is right on target. I guess I just feel like I’m bigger than I should be. We talked prenatal classes and he told us that we’d have another appointment in 4 weeks, then we’d need to start coming in every 2 weeks after that. Wow.

After the appointment, we went to breakfast at the Brite Spot and everything tasted badly. I thought it was just a bad breakfast cook. But later on I made myself a hamburger and it tasted awful. So did my Lil Debbie oatmeal pie. I finished the meal, but the only thing that tasted good was the tart applesauce.

Betty has decided to do this thing where she doesn’t so much kick as move. A lot. It kind of feels like she’s rolling around in there. Strange. But I’m glad she’s active and that I no longer have to wonder if she’s okay and/or alive. Still, I feel full all the time. And as of Wednesday, I have like no appetite. Plus, as you can probably tell by now, I’m getting kinda grumpy.

Later that day, two of my friends who were already moms told me that the discomfort only gets worse as the third trimester progresses and that there’s basically no cure for general pregnancy discomfort. I’ve noticed that moms have a hard time not telling you the truth AFTER you’re pregnant. Before that, it’s all like, “Yeah, join the club, it’s so great!”

“Two more weeks,” I told CH at breakfast. “Two more weeks of complaining, then I’ll get sick of myself and stop,” I promised.

He told me I wasn’t that bad.

CH is great. Betty will be great, too. I can’t wait to meet her. Outside of my body.

17 more weeks to go.