As I write this I am 31 weeks pregnant and finally out of the second trimester! The second trimester is usually the favourite, you start to get a lovely bump, first trimester sickness comes to an end, you start glowing and feeling the baby move, you may even decide to find out the sex of the baby.
Well my second trimester has been relentless quite frankly, and whilst I know it will be worth it; right now I wouldn’t want to go through those 14 weeks again if you paid me.
If you have read my last blog you will know that my second trimester began with a phone call to say my baby had a 1:6 chance of having Down’s syndrome. I don’t feel I will ever be able to really have the words for the emotional rollercoaster I went through for the three weeks after that call to be honest. It broke me. I was anxious, didn’t sleep, could barley eat, I was crippled with guilt for feeling so devastated at the idea of having a child with Down’s syndrome, I also strangely felt that I had lost my baby. Perhaps in a way I did; lost the idea of what I felt s/he would be anyway. I became completely detached from the pregnancy and as the time went on I just became numb to it. When I got my results and they were low risk I expected to be jumping up and down crying with elation, but in all honesty I felt nothing. I had not been able to look at my scan photo, or plan ahead, and felt like I had to cut the world out in order to make it through the day. It took another two weeks for me to start re bonding with the pregnancy, and I almost felt like I was starting over. It was a really difficult and emotionally draining time.
Morning, Afternoon & Evening sickness.
Up until that point I had not experienced any morning sickness – not one bit. I pretty much sailed through the first trimester only having to deal with extreme exhaustion. I don’t know if it was the stress of my results or would have happened anyway, but as soon as the second trimester began so did the sickness. I could hardly eat anything – I basically lived off white toast (& I never really eat white bread) and cold roast potatoes with salt.
Cooking for everyone else was a nightmare. I couldn’t even sit with my children at the dinner table because the smells would make me sick. Being a previous sufferer of HG (hyperemesis gravidarum) I have had some pretty grim sickness moments, but this pregnancy without a doubt brought the worst!
It was the end of October and we had decided Noah would look around some secondary schools for September 2023. We are still unsure if he will go, or if we will continue to home educate, however I felt it was important that he made the decision having seen what the other side of the coin looked like. So off we went; the entire family to view a school that had probably been my goal for him since he was in reception – the school that most of his primary school aspired to go to. I thought I would make a bit of an effort that evening as I had been walking around the house looking like a hot mess for months. I put a dress on that could fit, blow dried my hair, put on my makeup – even wore some heels. About 10 minutes into the journey I began to feel sick, Will gave me a worthers original which had been previously helped during car journeys. However on this occasion it didn’t help. On this occasion I also didn’t have a plastic bag on me! Yes as you may have guessed, on this occasion- whilst Will was driving on a dual carriage way and couldn’t pull over I began to get sick ….. out of the car window!!! To add insult to injury my sick was rebounding back into my face making me more sick, and half of it was coming back through the car window whilst the kids were screaming that it was going on them! It was horrendous. As soon as Will could pull over he did, but by that time it was too late. My clothes, hair, even eyebrows were covered in sick and there was nothing I could do about it. The school we were viewing only had a single open evening so it was view tonight or never. Noah was desperate to still see the school, so when we arrived I had to sit in the school car park for 90 minutes – still covered in sick and smelling so so bad, whilst Will took Noah around the school. That was definitely a low point, not even just in this trimester or pregnancy but a low point in life!
My “morning” sickness continued right up until 27 weeks. I couldn’t eat any veg, I went off meat almost completely; I don’t eat red meat anyway but do usually eat chicken and fish. I couldn’t touch anything with a sauce or flavour and I dreaded every single meal time for 14 weeks. There were no food cravings just foods I was just unable to eat. There was only one thing I discovered I could eat apart from toast on days I felt slightly better and that was the Tesco’s chicken salad sandwich or their falafel wrap.
Most nights I’d cook for everyone and Will would go to the local Tesco’s petrol station and pick me up a sandwich. When they had run out of the chicken salad or falafel wrap it was devastating – I actually cried once because there was no other food that would stay down. As the trimester went on I started to become hungry and gain an appetite but still struggled with anything but a sandwich – a Tesco’s sandwich to be exact.
Towards the end of the second trimester the exhaustion from the first trimester returned. I assumed it was due to being sick so much, the fact Will was away for 6 weeks during the above period, then the kids all getting a winter flu and that dreaded never ending cough. However my 28 week bloods came back as me being anaemic; which was no great surprise considering what my diet had been for the last three months, but it definitely explained the tiredness. It was more than just regular life and pregnancy exhaustion- it was, I can’t function and am slurring my words exhaustion.
so as you can see my second trimester was far from idealic, it wasn’t enjoyable and even though there were tiny moments of joy like feeling the baby move for the first time and finding out the sex (we haven’t decided if or when we will share that) however generally it was just a horrible three months that I am grateful I never have to repeat!
Thankfully the week before Christmas as my second trimester started to come to an end my sickness came to an end (for now anyway). I had no idea how I would have got through Christmas if it had not stopped ……. But it did and I got to enjoy my first proper meal in months – two infact, one on Christmas Day and the other on Boxing Day!
If you are reading this in any trimester and dealing with pregnancy sickness I can assure you that it does end, and it is worth it. It may not be soon, it may not even be during pregnancy (I was sick with Oliver right up until the moment I gave birth) however it does end, and once you are holding your baby in your arms you would go through it all again in a heartbeat. However whilst you are in the thick of it it feels never ending. Give yourself some Grace, it’s ok to be miserable & not want to socialise, it’s ok to be asleep by 7pm, it’s ok to feel completely ungrateful for being pregnant. Morning sickness is hard, pregnancy is hard!
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