How is it possible that I skipped so many weeks documenting my pregnancy here? I don’t have a good answer to that. So I’m going to skip the excuses and cut right to the chase.
I’m 34 weeks pregnant and my belly feels huge right now. However, when I see other women who are as far along as me, I know I’m still pretty petite.
Symptoms:
I went from having symptoms that were easy to ignore to symptoms that knocked me on my butt in the third trimester. Towards the end of my second trimester, my back started to hurt and progressively got worse. One of my midwives (I’m in a midwife group at my OB) said it was probably my ribs expanding. But it never went away and now is at a point where I need to spend a significant portion of my day in a reclining position. My back never hurts during my almost daily four-mile walks. Sitting upright in a chair (or in the car) seems to really exacerbate my back, until I am able to recline or lie down.
The third trimester has also brought pretty significant lack of energy. It has become challenging when planning my time. Most days, I need to walk first thing in the morning, if I’m going to walk at all, because I feel fresher then and because the summer heat is bearable. However, I’ve always had a fresher mind in the morning, so I really prefer to get to work as soon as my feet in the floor. Also, because I get so tired so easily, I can’t plan anything that requires me to sit up in a chair, back-to-back. For example, I’m afraid to go to dinner and a movie because that would be hours of sitting upright and most likely would cause me to be in severe pain by the end of the night.
Thank goodness I don’t work in a traditional office setting, else I would be in tears by the end of the day. I count myself very lucky to have the flexibility to work from home almost 100% of the time.
Cravings:
I completely missed documenting the sweet tea cravings I had for weeks. I’ve finally moved on from that to some degree. No longer am I driving to McDonalds at 10 pm to fix my sweet tea craving (McDonalds has THE BEST sweet tea!). But now I order unsweetened tea sometimes at restaurants, but I bring along my Stevia to sweeten it.
Now, I’m craving popsicles. I must have a popsicle at least once a day and sometimes twice. For a while I was on a coconut popsicle kick and now I’m relying heavily on the Harris Teeter (local grocery store) low fat chocolate popsicles.
I’ve also had some random cravings, like one night I had to have pulled pork barbecue and every once in a while, I really want some guacamole. However, neither of these things are too far off from my pre-pregnancy cravings.
Fun Stuff:
Baby E is super active right now. Several times a day, my belly visibly moves in ripples, so that you could see it if you were standing across the room. I also recently figured out that the rhythmic thumping I feel often is actually hiccups. Since figuring that out, he has gotten the hiccups at least once every single day.
The nursery is so close to being completely done and I can’t wait to show everyone. And luckily Baby E has been head down now for months and months so I’m not concerned about him being breech (which was one of my biggest fears early on because I’ll do just about anything to avoid a C-section).
I’ve got one shower under my belt and another one coming up for my family on Sunday. Also, my maternity photos are this Saturday. This kind of stuff makes me feel like he is almost here!