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WHAT HAPPENS DURING YOUR THIRD TRIMESTER

Welcome back for the third instalment of my “What Happens During…” series. My first trimester instalment is over here and my second here. The wait for your baby is nearly (sort of) over. Everything is getting serious, real, draining and seriously exciting too and if you are reading this right now (August 2020) in your third trimester you are probably quite hot and uncomfortable. I am here to share some of the things I went through in my third trimester which may be of some help to you.

GROWTH SCANS

I was booked in for growth scans which meant that I was given two extra scans. At first I was worried as I was given this because of a minor issue I had but actually it was a blessing. I loved being able to see my baby on the screen for an extra couple of times. It felt reassuring and exciting too.

HYPNOBIRTHING

I am just mid writing a blog post on what hypnobirthing is and if it worked for me after doing a lot of classes of practice. In brief though I would say you should 110% do some hypnobirthing classes with your birth partner. You learn so much about the birth process itself which you don’t learn from your midwife appointments.

BIRTH PLAN

During my hypnobirthing classes I was taught about birth plans, how to write them and what to include. Liam and I had initially planned a homebirth so wrote our birth plan accordingly. I would suggest if you’re doing the same to add in your hospital plans as well such as what drugs you’re interested in, if you’re happy with a student nurse etc. Maybe I should write up a blog post on how to write one?

KICKS OR THUMPS

Oh goodness, the kicking and thumping gets quite aggressive at times. One night he was kicking so much that I actually felt suffocated for my baby and thought he needed to get out so googled info on excessive kicking! Turns out I needn’t have worried. There was one day where I didn’t feel any movement and that is when you should ask for help. I did ring triage when this happened and was called in for monitoring. It turns out that my bay had moved to behind my placenta which in turn dulled any baby movements I was getting. It is always best to ring in if you have any worries, they’re always lovely and helpful on the phone.

Week 36, when my baby was the size of a watermelon

EXERCISE OR LACK OF

You might be slowing down on your amount of exercise soon but it’s really important to keep moving. I was going for a walk every night with my hubby and dog for about an hour. I believe 20 minutes a day is recommended. I also went for long bike rides up until my 37th week. A lot of people told me I was being too risky but as it was the beginning of lockdown and there were so few people on the road I actually felt incredibly safe. If it weren’t lockdown I think I would have tried to go swimming a lot. I am so pleased I worked out a lot before birth because I am now seven weeks postpartum and not yet signed off to start exercising again but only just starting to feel sluggish and like I need to get back out there.

SLEEP AND WEEING

So many people say, “get your sleep in now before your baby arrives”, well, let me tell you now…sleep in your third trimester isn’t too fabulous! You will have your baby jumping around on your bladder so you will likely be waking up for a wee a fair few times during the nights sleep. Also, however much sleep you “clock up during your third trimester”, you aren’t necessarily going to feel super rested from when your baby arrives and you’re only getting 1 hours sleep a night! Just do your best and enjoy the fact your adorable baby will be in your arms soon.

TRICKY JOBS

Don’t be too freaked out by this but perineal massaging and colostrum harvesting are something you may want to read up on. Colostrum harvesting is basically getting some special golden pre-milk out of your boobs by hand expressing. It is known as liquid gold as the nutritional value of it is fantastic for your baby. Watch some videos online and ask your midwife for some advice on it and ask for them to give you some pipettes. You shouldn’t start trying to harvest until I believe 37 weeks as it can sometimes initiate your labour! I personally didn’t have any luck with harvesting pre labour but on the day of the birth of my son I managed to harvest right away before I managed to get him to latch on to breast feed. Perineal massage…well, this is something you may want to google for yourself ;).

To sign off I’d like to say, good luck for your delivery and thank you so much for reading. I’ve heard a lot about the illusive “fourth trimester”, so, who knows, I may be back sooner than you think with my thoughts on that time.

WHAT HAPPENS DURING YOUR SECOND TRIMESTER

Welcome back for the second instalment of my “What Happens During…” series. My first trimester instalment is over here. I feel my second trimester was much easier than my first for a few reasons, although my morning sickness didn’t disappear as many people had suggest and sometimes promised.

SHARE YOUR JOYOUS NEWS

Wahoo…you can finally tell your news to the world. Some people tell friends after the 12 weeks scan, some after their 20 week scan. Whatever works for you, enjoy every moment. It is such a lovely time. Everyone will be so excited. I spent many hours watching pregnancy reveal videos on YouTube with happy tears in my eyes haha. Just make sure you tell everyone close to you before putting in out on social media.

BUMP WATCH

My bump grew very slowly. The retorts I received were commonly, “there’s nothing in there”. While this may be their way of saying you look slim, it can definitely play on the mind of a pregnant woman so try your best not to judge her bump size. I have a long torso and was thought to have a tilted uterus so the way I started off growing my baby was rather discretely I guess. As I write this at 39 weeks and 6 days I can tell you I have definitely “popped” now. We all develop at different times.

WHAT HAPPENS DURING YOUR SECOND TRIMESTER | Megan Taylor — (Baby the size of a melon)

MORNING SICKNESS

Oh how I wish I could say morning sickness disappears after the first trimester…mine definitely didn’t and it was awful. I didn’t have the dreadful Hyperemesis gravidarum I did experience being sick about 4/5x a day. It was incredibly isolating, upsetting and debilitating. I spent many days researching ways to stop morning sickness with no real result. I did find a way to a survive though and wrote about it here. I hope it helps you if you too are suffering.

PREGNANCY TABLETS

I used these Pregnacare vitamins throughout my pregnancy. I was advised to take them by the nurses at the hospital when they found out how little food I could keep down as a result of my morning sickness. They are filled with all the fabulous nutrients you need to keep your baby growing healthily. The huge bonus to these tablets is that my nails and hair have never looked so incredible. They make my nails grow at an alarming rate. I even booked a big hand modelling job during my second trimester which I put down to these vitamins 🙂

MIDWIFE APPOINTMENTS

Your midwife appointments get far more interesting in your second trimester. You get to hear the baby’s heartbeat at every session which feels like a lovely window into your baby’s life. I didn’t understand the noise at first but the midwife let us record the sound and then I constantly played it at home with hubby explaining where the heartbeat noise was. It is so so so much faster than ours, it’s like horses galloping.

20 WEEK SCAN

Yay, it’s time for your 20 week scan. You will most likely have a good half an hour in the room with the sonographer. They check your baby to every little millimeter. As soon as the scanner spied my wriggling baby I felt chilled and excited to see more. Make sure you say if you want to know the sex or not as soon as you walk in the room. The pictures we got from our scan were our best yet. They were incredibly detailed and showed all the bones.

AN ETERNITY

Shock horror…the second trimester is not 12 weeks!! It is longer!! It felt sooo long…enjoy 😉

FLUTTERS AND KICKS

The NHS suggest that most women feel their baby start to move between 16 and 24 weeks. I felt a strange sort of bubble in my stomach around 20 weeks but didn’t feel full on kicks until a lot later. My placenta lays at the front of my stomach so all the kicks are dulled a little. If you are the same as me do not fret, the third trimester will be filled with violent kicks to make up for it :P.

How was your second trimester? Did your morning sickness continue?

WHAT HAPPENS DURING YOUR FIRST TRIMESTER

So you’ve just found out you’re pregnant. You may have been trying for months, for years or may have been successful first time. Or, you may have accidentally conceived. However you got here, I’m just here to share my experience of what I went through during my first trimester as a first time expectant mummy. You may or may not experience these things and when I talk about the midwife and hospital appointments this is regarding UK care, I’m not sure how exactly it differs across the world.

FIRST SIGNS

My first signs of possibly being pregnant, other than a missed period, were a sense of nausea in the evenings. It was strange,I would be really tired and lying in bed ready to sleep and a wave of nausea would hit me like a strong wave and disappear as quickly as it came. Another sign I had was that I needed to pee a whole lot more than normal and I pee regularly anyway so I knew something was up. It is only after reading a few books that I’ve learnt this is super common and is actually your hormones stimulating your kidneys to expand and produce more urine.

THE BIGGEST AND MOST EXCITING SECRET

Once you find out you will probably want to shout it from the rooftops and you’re right to want to, the feeling of telling your friends and family that you’re pregnant is like no other. Everyone shows such joy and happiness for you, it’s lovely. It is recommended to not tell anyone until after your 12 week scan. Liam and I wanted to tell our family sooner so we went for a private 9 week scan at Window To The Womb. This made us feel a lot more comfortable that there was definitely a baby in there and news to tell. It also meant we could tell them with a photo and we even paid a little extra for a video of the scan and our baby wriggling about in there. I think a general rule to go by when deciding whether or not to tell people is, would you tell that person if the worst happened and you were no longer pregnant? If the answer to that is yes then there is no harm in telling them your exciting news (in my opinion).

WHO TO TELL AND WHEN

My biggest advise to telling people is to make a list of people to tell that need to know before any news hits social media or spreads through word of mouth. Liam and I wrote a list of family members and friends that we were going to tell and in which order and then ticked them off as we had spread the news. We told our parents before anyone else.

TIME TO RING MY DOCTOR

So your pregnancy test says you’re pregnant and now it’s probably time to book a doctors appointment, right? Well, I rung mine and the grumpy receptionist said that I don’t come to them, I need to go online, sign up as being pregnant and my local health centre would call me to book me in. As a first time expectant mum I had no idea but my happy buzz was definitely killed by this receptionist.

A week after registering online and 2 days before I was due to turn six weeks pregnant a midwife from the local health centre rung me asking me to come in the next day to essentially register myself as being pregnant and then booked me in for my 12 week hospital scan as well. Kaboom, it’s all getting a bit real now. I say to ,shelf, “it’s all getting a bit real now” on a regular basis. I actually don’t think it will be properly “real” until my baby is in my arms though.

FIRST MIDWIFE APPOINTMENT

My first midwife appointment was the longest doctors appointment I have ever had. Normally they kick you out after 2-3 minutes with a prescription for something or other but this was like a family history interview. Liam and I were both asked everything about our family health history, and our own. I was taken outside to be weighed and asked if I felt safe around Liam. I laughed and she sternly responded, but are you in safe hands? I answered, “of course”!

I then to my horror also had you blood pressure and bloods taken. I have a serious case of white coat syndrome and everything to do with doctors and hospitals terrifies me (at 37 weeks in I am slowly getting better).

SIX WEEKS IN

Six weeks of being pregnant doesn’t seem like a lot, especially when if you don’t count your period you may have on,y technically been pregnant for about 4 weeks but 6 weeks on the dot my morning sickness arrived and didn’t leave for a bloody long time!!

The hardest thing about feeling the worst you’ve ever felt before the 12 week scan is that it is the loneliest time you will experience whilst being pregnant. You can’t tell anyone or explain why you’re feeling so awful. I was bed ridden with sickness for a lot of my early pregnancy and just had to push through when I went out for work. It was an awful time that I’m pleased has gone. I remember spending hours watching YouTube videos and reading books and blog posts about how to stop feeling sick and then ringing my mum in floods of tears that I couldn’t stop feeling CRAP. Just know, that it will stop soon(ish).

BLOAT VS SHOWING

Am I showing signs of a baby belly or a food belly or is it just bloat? I didn’t show for a really long time (which actually didn’t make me happy-more on that in my second trimester blog post) but I felt uncomfortably bloated at times. If you do start showing or like me are a model that has a size that their clients think they are it can be an even tougher secret to hide. If it’s summer, wear floaty dresses, if it’s winter, wear a baby jumper and make sure you have a spare hair tie for the jeans hair tie trick (if you don’t know it, it’s in my Bump highlights on my Instagram page @megantaylorlondon

FIRST SCAN

Hooray, it’s finally the day you’ve been waiting for, your possibly first scan and chance to see your baby. I’m so pleased I had an early 9 week scan because it allowed me to just enjoy my 12 week scan knowing there was a baby in there. I hadn’t started showing at all at 12 weeks so it was sometimes hard to believe I was having a baby. At your 12 week scan they want to check measurements of your baby which will give you a clearer due date estimate. They also check a measurement in the back of the neck to work out the probability of chances of down syndrome and a few other potential syndromes as such. My baby was such a mover, wriggling all over the belly that they couldn’t measure the neck so sent me off to jiggle about, walk around for half an hour and eat something sugary. I came back and they still couldn’t tie the baby down so I was booked for a further scan a few days later. They have to do this test before I think 13/14 weeks so there was a time pressure on this. At the next scan they just about managed to pin the baby down for a measurement, then sent me on to have my bloods taken which is standard procedure. What I didn’t know at the time was that they had sent my bloods off for private testing to do a DNA test on my bloods to take strains of the baby’s bloods to work out if it had any problems. I am so pleased I wasn’t told until my results came back as good as they could be otherwise I would have spent weeks until my midwife appointment worrying about the results.

I feel like that was way more than I was expecting to write, but I hope it can help you in some way with a sense of reassurance and to know what’s to expect. How was your first trimester if you have already been through it? If you’re pregnant now, when are you due?