13th Week

Okay, I may have jumped the gun a bit last week. I was celebrating the end of my first trimester since I had officially reached 12 weeks. In my mind, 12 weeks equals 3 months, and if women are pregnant for 9 months then the first three months would equal the first trimester, right? Here’s where it gets weird. Even if women are pregnant for 9 months (which would be 36 weeks), it takes 40 weeks to carry a baby to full term. And so 40 weeks divided by 3 (trimesters) equals 13.3 weeks. So technically, I should only be celebrating the end of my first trimester this week (which is my 13th week). Does that make sense? Anyhoo, it’s all a moot point by this point anyway.

So, are there any noticeable changes now that I am in / entering my 2nd trimester? None that are extra significant really. My morning sickness is almost gone (except for a few very minor mishaps). My cravings are down to almost a minimum which is good and bad. Good, because I am no longer very particular or picky about food. But also bad, because I now like eating almost everything and anything (and have to consciously try to eat healthy and balanced meals). Which I can’t say always happens. My sleeping patterns are more normal too – gone are the days where I am a complete sleepyhead (sleeping more than 12 hours a day). These days, it seems 8 hours of sleep is my magic number. I still have to pee a lot which I am told will get worse as the pregnancy progresses. It’s a drag to have to get up sometimes 3-4 times a night to go pee. But it’s not so bad. On a more “personal level” (and those who don’t want too much information can stop reading till the end of this paragraph and can just pick up again in the next paragraph), my breasts are still super tender (it almost hurts when I put on a shirt because of the chafing – but I notice that moisturizing lotion helps. And my pooping is also now on a more regular basis (it was bordering on constipation a few weeks ago). (I did warn you that I would be sharing TMI – too much info!).

Another slight “change” is I’ve noticed that some of my pants and skirts have started to feel slightly more snug. At first, I thought, maybe I was just gaining weight (read the part again where I wrote about now wanting to eat anything and everything!). Plus we’ve just had so many occasions to eat out and entertain this month … it’s been crazy! But Jojo said he didn’t really notice the other parts of my body gaining weight – just the lower part of my belly (and my waist area) seem to be thickening. So I’ve consulted my hoard of baby books and the multitude of pregnancy websites I frequent and they do say that most pregnant women start to experience tummy “growth” towards the third, fourth or fifth month of pregnancy. So, this extra little bulge (not enough to show yet, but certainly enough for me to notice), is just Jellybean making his/her presence felt. How surreal that for the first time in my entire life, I am excited about this extra little bit of flab and the extra 2 pounds that have showed up on my scale this morning! =)