Second Trimester Bumpdate

Wow. I can’t believe we’re finally in the home stretch! Bebes take a really long time to cook, ya know that?? I swear, I’m constantly looking at the calendar on my Glow app where it counts down the days. There are some days where being pregnant during a global pandemic is really scary and some days I’m really grateful to be going through pregnancy during a time where I have very little in-person human interaction. To be honest, I am still dealing with a lot of issues surrounding my body image and the changes haven’t all been welcome. But more on that later!

first of all…

It’s a boy! We have had his name picked out for quite some time and we are so excited to meet Mr. Grayson Emmett. We decided on Grayson several years ago. There isn’t a big dramatic story behind it, just that we like it and it makes us smile when we say it. Emmett, however, is a very special name. It was my grandpa’s name and he was one of the most important people in my life. He was my best friend and oh my gosh, he would have loved baby Gray. This whole pregnancy would have just made him an anxious nervous wreck. He was constantly calling me at school or work to make sure I had eaten that day and he’d drop anything to come rushing over to my apartment to fix a clogged sink. I’m proud my son will cary his name. As far as nicknames are concerned, we’ve already started referring to him as Sonny or Sonny boy which was my dad’s childhood nickname. It warms my heart to feel like such important men are already such a big part of our Gray BayBay.

the second trimester

physically | omg what a difference a trimester makes! I can see why they call it the second trimester honeymoon. I have felt great! A few complaints here and there but I feel like a normal, functioning member of society, whereas in the first trimester getting out of bed was an act of God. I’ve still been getting crazy heartburn almost daily, but under my doctor’s suggestion, I’ve been using Pepcid AC to control it. I feel like after living with it for a few weeks, I am finally learning how to tame it so it doesn’t feel as debilitating. I know that around 3pm everyday, the heartburn is going to rear it’s ugly head, so around 2:45pm I take a tiny white pill and I’m good as gold!

Some mornings my stomach feels a little weak, but as soon as I eat, I seem to feel just fine. At 6 months, I am finally wearing some maternity clothes. I bought a pair of maternity jeans that I think are actually pretty cute, a pair of maternity denim shorts that are the comfiest thing EVER and a maternity swimsuit that made for a hella cute photo opp!

sleep | as I talked about in my first trimester bumpdate, I am still using Unisom to help me with sleep. Without it, I seem to be able to fall asleep just fine, but it’s very light and I can’t seem to stay asleep. Not to mention, I am up about once every two hours to go to the bathroom. At our last ultrasound, they saw that Grayson is currently breached which makes a lot of sense because I feel him kick my bladder constantly during the night. I bought a pregnancy pillow that has really become a hot commodity in this house. Between Jerry and Leo, I don’t know who likes it more! Haha. As the pregnancy progresses, it has been great to help keep my hips aligned. Otherwise, I wake up with sore hips and back and I toss and turn throughout the night.

how’s babe?! | so far, so good! we had our anatomy scan at 22 weeks and they confirmed that they could see all his extremities, organs, and brain. The only thing they couldn’t confirm was his nasal bone, because he flat-out refused to move his hands from in front of his face. Our poor ultrasound tech tried to get him to move them for the better part of an hour, but mister mister is stubborn. They said he is measuring in the 39th percentile, a little bit on the small side, but not anything of concern (man oh man, I hope this poor little boy isn’t cursed with mama’s height!). We’ve been joking that when the doctor pulls him out, we’ll have to ask if we have a center or a point guard hahaha. We finally felt him kick at 22 weeks and at the anatomy scan we found out why it took so long: my placenta is in the anterior! This means my placenta is in front, in between my tummy and the baby. So he had some cushion for a while to prevent me from feeling him. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with having an anterior placenta, although it does contribute to more back pain and there is a slightly higher risk of needing to deliver him via C-section.

emotionally | While I am still struggling a bit, I do feel a lot better than I did in the first trimester. Due to Covid-19, I have stopped therapy, but I am still on my antidepressant which I believe has helped immensely. I have been taking polaroid photo updates monthly to document my growing bump, and to be honest, I dread them. Every time I see the new one and compare it to where I started I start crying. I worked hard to get my body to a place I was comfortable with before I got pregnant and watching it change and expand has been hard on me. I see my progress photos and I don’t seen a pretty round little bump. I feel like I just look wider. I don’t know if it’s the position he’s in or just how my body is distributing my weight gain, but I still don’t feel like I look pregnant most days. I keep waiting for the bump to look more round and less…flabby? At my last doctor appointment, I broke down crying and told my doctor that I felt like I was gaining too much weight. I felt guilty- like I had to admit it to her (even though she knows exactly how much I’ve gained as they weigh me at every appointment). At that point I had gained 11 lbs and she assured me that I am on the “low end of normal”. She was so kind and I will forever be grateful for her.

With the exception of my body blues, I’m feeling good! I’m getting excited about the nursery and looking forward to the changes in my life that baby will bring. I can’t wait to go camping with my friends and all our babies. I can’t wait for family vacations. I can’t wait for Christmas and Halloween and Birthday parties. Hell, I’m even looking forward to parent-teacher conferences!

food | I still have yet to have any real specific cravings. There’s a few items here and there that I eat pretty consistently, but that’s more because I’m a creature of habit. Even before I got pregnant, I would have a tendency to eat pretty much the same thing every day for months at a time before moving on to something different. Almost every morning I eat avocado toast with a poached egg. I crave Diet Coke pretty often (I always have, though) and I usually snack on grapes and gold fish throughout the day. I have noticed that sometimes someone will mention a food and suddenly it will sound really good which is new! For example, last week Jerry and I were on our evening walk and he said something about root beer floats. I’ve never been a huge root beer float fan, but in that moment I had to have one. Luckily, J was happy to oblige and we took a little sunset drive to A&W for root beer floats. I think that was the first time I have had one since I was a kid and I haven’t felt the need to have another one since. So weird lol.

health | For the most part, things have been just fine. I am experiencing a case of Bernhardt-Roth Syndrome. This occurs when the baby is pressing against the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve and it causes a numbness in my outer left thigh. This is relatively harmless and should go away after I deliver the baby but man, it’s annoying as all hell. It’s especially bad at night after my walk when I’ll start to feel what I can only describe as bolts of electricity shooting through my thing. Also, sometimes it feels like I have an itch there but I can’t feel it when I go to scratch it so I have to be careful not to scratch too hard and make myself bleed. Toward the beginning of the second trimester it was just numb, however as we approached the third trimester it began to get very painful. So much so that it keeps me up at night. My doctor suggested heat and tylenol, neither of which have been particularly effective. The only thing that seems to have helped a little bit is my maternity belt. It provides some support to help lift the bump and try to get him off the nerve. It is also meant to support my back which is much needed as baby gets bigger.

how’s the nursery coming? | honestly? we have BARELY started. We just picked out and ordered our crib, mattress, dresser, and rocker, but none of them have arrived yet. We will be starting on paint next week and I have a general idea of the decor. We have settled on a theme: we love you to the moon and back. It will be all moons and stars with grays and blues and golds. It took me a while to get excited about the nursery which is unlike me.. I love home decor! But, I had a ton of ideas for a baby girl room and not so many for a boy, so it took me a few weeks before I really settled on anything. A lot of you have been asking for a nursery update, so I will definitely have another blog post coming about it. I’m sure you’ll see it on Instagram stories as well!

bod | I am still being vigilant about using my belly oil to prevent stretch marks and so far knock on wood, none have appeared! I thought I may have escaped without a linea nigra, however I noticed this week a very fine faint line running from my belly button down. I learned that the linea nigra’s appearance is due to hyper pigmentation associated with hormones in pregnancy, which also lead to a lovely case of malasma. Sometimes called the “mask of pregnancy” a lot of pregnant women experience hyper pigmentation on the face. Mine has only appeared in one spot: my upper lip. Yep. I have a super cute mustache. At first I thought my lack of access to waxing during quarantine was to blame but I soon realized the skin is smooth as a baby’s butt. It’s just discolored. Where is all this glowing I heard so much about?! In an effort to combat that, I have been alternating between this and this facial sunscreen daily as sun exposure can worsen melasma. I have also begun using a Vitamin C serum from HyperSkin that is meant to target hyperpigmentation and is safe for pregnancy. I haven’t seen too much of a difference yet, but I’m going to give it a few weeks.

In other news, in an effort to keep my weight gain under control and to hopefully ease my labor, I have been walking 2 miles per day. When I first found out I was pregnant, I had planned to swim as my maternity exercise. I was a lifeguard for several years and was in the best shape of my life during those years. Coronavirus had other plans though, and since all the pools were closed, walking it is! J and I walk a half mile with Leo in the morning and 1.5 in the evenings after the sun starts to set. Some days it’s harder than others, but I’m glad to have established the habit early so I can do it for as long as I can.