Holy crap: I made it through another trimester! Two-thirds done. On one hand, I can’t believe it. On the other, I feel like I’ve been pregnant for three dog years, and I’m ready for this baby to live externally. I thought a lot about what catchy name I’d give to the second trimester. For me the first trimester was so obviously Hellmester, but the second was harder to nail down. Flashmester: So Much Just Happened And I Remember Nothing? Bloatmester? Bump-envy-mester? Konmarimester?
At the end of the day, Hypemester just fits. There’s a lot of hype surrounding the second trimester and what a lady can expect to experience during this time: second winds, Babymoons, nesting modes, and feeding frenzies, to name a few. And it turns out a lot of this hype may not apply to you AT ALL. I’ve had many misconceptions about pregnancy in general, and about the second trimester in particular, possibly because I’ve received too much of my intel from TV shows and movies written by too many males and too few females.
Here are some of my most glaring misconceptions about the second trimester:
My appetite will return in spades, I’ll have cravings, and I will finally achieve my dream of “eating for two.”
Oh, food. How I miss thee. Remember our girlhood days together – frolicking through the meadows, devouring “second breakfasts,” midnight snacks, sushi buffets, fistfuls of cookies, and half a box of cereal in a single sitting? Okay, perhaps I have a problem with overeating, but what times we had!
I mean, I read a paragraph or two of What to Expect When You’re Expecting.I didn’t really think I’d be “eating for two” during pregnancy. But I didn’t realize I would feel more like I was “eating for 0.85.”
My appetite improved a lot during Hypemester, but it’s not back to normal by a long shot. And? My hunger levels are hard af to gauge. The speed at which I go from “too bloated from my last meal to contemplate more food” to “shaking uncontrollably from near starvation” is about 2.5 seconds and technically qualifies me for the Olympics in at least three events.
Cravings have also proved elusive. I was hoping to crave something really weird and possibly embarrassing, but the closest I’ve come is sometimes wanting brownies. By the way, I’ve now made this extremely weird, semi-healthy brownie recipe twice, so I must share it. My Yelp review of it would read: “It sounds gross but it’s not gross.” It makes me feel like I can eat four brownies a day because they’re mostly sweet potatoes and dates.
I’m told my appetite won’t really come back till post-baby, especially if I breastfeed, so I’m looking forward to crushing an Indian buffet around then.
I’ll be able to gain weight at a steady and rational pace according to national guidelines, because pregnancy weight gain is governed by science and definitely not ancient magicks.
I didn’t gain weight during Hellmester, but somehow during Hypemester I gained 25 pounds. This is fine, as I think I’m cleared to gain up to 40 or so, but I’m a little worried about the third trimester, where I’ve heard it’s not abnormal to gain 5 pounds a week toward the end. As mentioned, my appetite is not back to 100%, and I can’t eat a ton at a time, so I’m not totally clear where these 25 pounds came from, other than the gallons of water I drink per day.
To help shed some light on the situation, I developed the following equation for better understanding pregnancy weight gain:
Where s is how slowly you had hoped to gain weight to avoid stretch marks and nerve pain;
w is water consumption;
r is the realization that your favorite yogurt snack contains as much sugar as ice cream;
RR is the risk ratio of bread to vegetables;
and fx is the competing force of your baby eating YOU in between meals.
I’ll have a huge surge of energy – a second trimester high.
Remember when I said I hoped this blog post would be titled “Elaborate Boats and Other Stuff I Built During My Second-Trimester High”? Of course you don’t. In any case, I just checked my boat coffers and they remain EMPTY. I have more energy than during Hellmester, but that’s like saying I have more energy than a corpse or a pile of old mud.
So far, I’ve constructed zero nests. I hope the baby will sleep well in a knockoff Dock-a-Tot on a stack of empty Amazon boxes that the baby shower gifts came in, because that’s my current speed.
But there’s still hope. My mom recently told me she felt good for one month during her pregnancies, from 7.5 months to 8.5 months pregnant. So she’s saying there’s a chance…
People will finally notice I’m pregnant, and give me special attention, accommodations, and high fives.
Man, my bump was a long time coming. I’d feel huge one night, then wake up small again, like I’d reabsorbed my baby’s house during the night. It’s not that I wanted all the discomfort that a big bump would bring. It’s that I wanted credit from all those skinny bitches at Soul Cycle for riding every week for most of my pregnancy. Unfortunately it’s very dark at Soul Cycle, both inside the studio and inside the souls of many people who ride there. Whatever. Finally, at 26 weeks pregnant, a fellow rider finally noticed me after class and was like “good for YOU.” Is it so wrong that I want someone to say “good for YOU” every time I leave the house and accomplish any sort of physical task? I don’t think so.
I’ll read everything I can about pregnancy and become an expert on my body rather than a person who is frequently shocked and horrified by her body.
These days, when I open a pregnancy app or book, I’m overcome by nausea – I swear it’s some kind of Pavlovian thing, where I associate pregnancy books with Hellmester and thus with death — so I’ve basically learned nothing new in the last 6 months unless it came from a mom friend or Youtube video.
Turns out I love mom vlogs. It’s just like reading pregnancy books, but where they’re written by random women you meet at the cheese counter at Whole Foods rather than respected experts. The best! Here are my favorite baby-related Youtubers to watch, ranked from least to most annoying voices:
My husband will lose his mind, perhaps weep uncontrollably for days, when he first feels the baby move.
Alas, when my husband did feel the cute little baby pick-and-rolls that I’d been experiencing internally for weeks, no tears were shed. His response was something more like: “Yes, I believed that there was a baby in there. From the ultrasounds.”
He’s definitely excited. But sometimes I wonder if the nicest thing I’ve ever done for him is a) gestate his tiny evil baby or b) finally watch The Wire. It’s just really hard to gauge his level of excitement when he doesn’t fall to his knees and break down crying at every important milestone, which would be my preferred reaction to everything.
By the second trimester, there will be more stuff for my husband to do, and I’ll feel less alone in this process.
My husband is a cool guy. He cooks delicious food, is the only person in our household who really knows how to drive, and he’s tall. But did I really feel less alone in this process during the second trimester? Not so much. Unfortunately there’s still not a ton for partners to DO, though I still found myself annoyed that he wasn’t doing more. In retrospect, after some hugely enlightening conversations with friends about concepts like emotional labor and mental load (thanks Rachel!), there are some things I wish I’d ask for more help with, like making the baby registry. I didn’t think I needed help with that at the time, but there are just so few tangible things that partners can do during this time, so make use of those things they can have a hand in. Since they can’t seem to help you, like, grow your baby’s spleen or anything.
Going forward, we also have GOT to figure out some solution for a shared calendar. Being the sole Keeper of the Calendar sucks. Sometimes I tell my husband things like “OK, I’m going to tell you the date and time of this appointment one more time, but if you don’t write it down now in some kind of record keeping device, and ask me again, I will burn you alive.” This is called “setting healthy boundaries.” So far we’ve had a handful of medical appointments, hospital tours, and a pediatrician’s office orientation to keep track of, but that’ll pale in comparison to all the baby visits, kid appointments, school functions, and so on to come. I can be forgetful myself, and totally beat myself up if I miss an event, so if you guys have any tips for sharing the calendar-keeping duties and other aspects of the mental load, please tell me!
The cute size comparisons on pregnancy apps will make any sense … at all.
For real, though, who came up with these? One week my baby was the size of a spaghetti squash and three weeks later it was demoted to a cucumber. I felt the need to apologize. And some of them are weird and amorphous, like:
Your baby is the size of three half eaten peaches. Your baby is the size of a sneeze. Your baby is invisible. Your baby is West Virginia. Your baby is the size of two kittens. Your baby is an actual kitten. Your baby is a long-distance phone call. Your baby is like a box of chocolates. Your baby is the size of two sneezes in a row. Your baby is behind you!
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For all these misconceptions, though, a few rumors about the second trimester were definitely true. I felt less anxious and much less sick, and baby kicks truly are the BEST. ♥ On to the next!
