Hellobee

First trimester in review here.

The second trimester was an exciting time – we were out with our news, and I slowly began feeling more and more like myself as the weeks progressed. While the baby makes huge leaps and bounds physically in the first trimester (every day was something huge like, your baby has a beating heart! Your baby has ears!), I feel like mama makes has a lot physical and mental leaps/changes in the second. Somewhere in there I began looking pregnant and the idea of this really happening sunk in.

Physically

Overall, I felt pretty great physically during the second trimester; however, while the first trimester had a lot of consistency with symptoms, the second trimester had several physical events that were stressful. I would feel pretty great until I didn’t. This included all of my spotting scares, and throwing my back out around 22 weeks.

I will also never forget being pregnant during the hottest summer I’ve ever experienced in my life. Whenever people would ask me how I was feeling, my answer was generally, “Hot, but pretty great otherwise!” I had lots of ideas of what this summer would involve, but let’s be real, it was too hot to enjoy the outdoors, and by the end of this summer, I was dreaming of snow.

Let’s also not forget the progression of the belly in the second trimester – this is probably the biggest physical change that happens along with a very itchy belly!

Emotionally

Like the first trimester, there were certainly a few hormonal episodes throughout the second trimester; however, overall I generally felt like myself day to day. With time this all started to feel more real, and it also felt safer to be excited.

We ended up having a really important conversation sometime near the end of my second trimester. It was one of those necessary talks when the little every day things start to add up on each end, and you feel so much better when you get everything off your chest. Being pregnant is a big shift and the same goes for your partner. Checking in with each other about our needs and how things were affecting each other was so renewing, and we both came out of the discussion feeling more connected and on the same page.

Highlights from the Second Trimester

While there were a few stressful moments, the highlights from the second trimester are certainly the best parts of my pregnancy thus far.

Beginning to feel this baby move was definitely the major highlight of the second trimester for me. With an anterior placenta, I knew it would be awhile before I felt anything; however, in early June (around 19 weeks) I started to feel little twitches, and eventually they started to become more consistent, and stronger. The progression of movement has been my favourite part of pregnancy, and I will never ever forget Mr. M’s face the first time he felt the baby kick at 25 weeks. After a lot of no’s in response to, “Do you feel that?” questions, he finally felt three little kicks. A moment that I will cherish forever!

Other highlights definitely included sharing our news publicly and our anatomy scan in mid-June (21 weeks).  Mr. M also painted the nursery, and we began to think about how we would put it together.

Second trimester in one word? Real. Things became real and the excitement grew a little more each day.

What were the highlights from your second trimester?