second trimester in review

The second trimester is definitely the golden trimester. Wayyy better than the first trimester, and you can start comparing your baby to pieces of fruit, in the above picture (about 15weeks) i'm craddling my lemon-baby! Some people talk about the 2nd trimester as this magical time where you have so much energy and feel so good...uhhh no. At least not for me, I still felt way better pre-pregnancy than I did 2nd tri BUT after the 1st trimester I was more than grateful for the 2nd 3 months to start!

The Good: Finding out my baby was a GIRL! This was definitely the best/most exciting part of the 2nd trimester and probably of my entire pregnancy. After we found out, we bought some girl onsies and girl-colored treats and I put the the onsies in a neutral bag for my parents to open that night. Well, because the first onsie is bluish-purple as my parents opened the bag my mom cried out "it's a girl!" while at the same time my dad said "it's a boy!" haha oops, he didn't notice the polka dots and flowers and pink piping and the pink onsies behind it...

I found out the sex at 17 weeks, and the ultrasound that week was SO fun! This was our 3rd ultrasound of the pregnancy and she actually looked like a baby this time, we loved it! We had another ultrasound at 21 weeks, and that one wasn't nearly as fun because she was too big to all fit in the picture so we just looked at different body parts at a time, but at 17 weeks we could see her all at once!

The Great: I stopped throwing up between 12-13 weeks and my nausea went down around 14 weeks. I would still get nauseous every once in a while, but it was no longer my constant companion--thank goodness!!

The Bad: Almost as soon as my nausea began to fade I started getting the worst headaches. They were so incredibly painful and nothing helped. Or at least nothing that pregnant women are allowed to take. When I had one I just had to go lay in bed, I couldn't handle any noise or too much light, I couldn't watch tv and my head hurt too bad to read or concentrate on anything so I literally just had to lay on my bed and do nothing for hours, which was pretty boring. And I got one of these headaches almost every single day for the first 2 weeks of my second trimester. Sometimes I would go to bed with one and wake up with it again the next morning. I saw my OB at the end of the 2 weeks of straight headaches and she did prescribe me some stronger headache medicine, but she basically said there's not much I can do about them. The pills she gave me helped but they didn't make the headache go away they just took the edge off and made them more bearable, but it would only last for 2-3 hours and I wasn't supposed to take them all the time. So I would try and save it for when I really needed it like at work or before a bigger event or some really fun activity I wanted to do.
Luckily, after those first couple weeks, the headaches did start to decrease to 5 days out of the week and then to 3-4 days out of the week and then it stayed at about 3 days a week for the rest of my second trimester.

The Ugly: A lot of the other horrible pregnancy symptoms you hear about began to appear right away too! Around 14 weeks I also began to have acid reflux and heartburn, which caught me off guard since I had never in my life had heartburn before so I didn't know what was going on at first. But thanks to acid reflux I've pretty much had a chronic sore throat since 14 weeks.
Leg cramps in the middle of the night! Ouch! these started around 19 or 20 weeks, and sometimes i'll get them every night in a row, multiple times a night and then i'll have a blessed stretch of 3-4 days with no leg cramps.
Some sciatica pain. Also, my back would hurt and ache so much faster than it used to! I used to get a sore back after working like 3 days in a week, but in my second tri I noticed that my back would start to kill after just 4-5 hours at work*! And my tailbone would often feel really sore, which i found out is due to progesterone relaxing the joints. And along with a sore tailbone I would just get lots of aches and pains, including round ligament pain all around my stomach. There's probably more symptoms/complaints I could list but I think you get the idea...

Loved: Feeling her move! The first little movements started around 16 weeks, and at 20 weeks I discovered if I lifted up my shirt and watched my tummy i could actually she her little kicks and punches! That became my new favorite hobby. And Kyle first felt and saw her move at 20 weeks, which was pretty sweet.

Cravings: Watermelon and fruit. Smoothies, flavored lemonades! Anything really savory too, I had this cajun shrimp and grits dish at 20 weeks that was sooo good. It gave me bad heartburn, but was totally worth it. Still really enjoyed french fries, tater tots, mac n cheese and cheese and crackers. AND i could eat salads and vegetables again! While i maybe didn't crave salad and vegetables I liked them when I ate them and I tried to make sure I was eating some every day.

20 weeks--vacationing at Kiawah Island!

Overall: Second trimester was pretty good. I was able to do things again, I could play tennis and go for bike rides and walks, go out with friends, go swimming, etc. We went on a couple vacations that I still need to blog about. After the headaches started to go down I usually felt pretty decent, and happy! And it was fun knowing the baby was a girl and getting to imagine the future with her. And feeling her kick and move and having my stomach start to grow made it all a lot more real!

Around 21 weeks.
I remember feeling so big and pregnant that day and now (at 31 weeks) I just laugh-- that was nothing!!

*Work--Before I got pregnant I was working 3-4 days a week as a dental hygienist. Once I hit 8 weeks pregnant I felt too sick to keep it up and changed my schedule to 2 days/week, and I stayed at 2 days a week until we moved to Galveston. I only ever called in sick one day during my 1st trimester and one day during my 2nd trimester. Thanks to many prayers, on the days I had to work I usually was blessed to feel well enough to do so. Since moving to Galveston I've worked 1-2 days a week as a temp or sub hygienist, but with the start of school that number might decrease even more, and I'm okay with that:)