How time flies!!! It seems barely a few months since I peed on a stick and found out that I was expecting a baby xD And now my belly is hugeeee, moving by itself and I can’t see my feet hahaha.
28 weeks marked the start of the 3rd trimester, and I braced myself for it, anticipating the “honeymoon period” of my 2nd trimester to end. Common things I heard of that heralded the 3rd trimester was the possible return of 1st tri symptoms (tiredness, nausea, heartburn etc). Surprisingly, I continued to feel pretty amazing with not many changes all the way up to 36 weeks!
Well, for me, my digestion hasn’t been great throughout the entire pregnancy. In fact, I’m probably one of the few pregnant women who has a poorer appetite during pregnancy compared to pre-pregnancy. I’m really looking forward to eating all my favourite food again!!! Thankfully, perhaps because I haven’t been able to eat much, I didn’t experience much of a change in my digestion ability in the 3rd tri. At least it didn’t go back to how it was in the 1st, which I’m super duper grateful for. Not sure whether it’s also because I’ve been taking probiotics? But I do feel that my stomach has been stronger somewhat since I started taking that.
In terms of energy, I continued to feel super energetic most of the time! Despite not sleeping very well throughout most of the pregnancy, I still feel pretty alright during the day. There were occasions when I suddenly felt exhausted and had to take an afternoon nap, but I was definitely not as tired like in the 1st trimester. I’m also thankful that perhaps because baby has not been too big and also with the exercise that I’ve been doing, I didn’t feel the “heaviness” of the belly from the front. It was only at 36 weeks that I started experiencing lower back aches after standing for awhile. Welcome back, belly band! It has been a great support (literally), especially when I want to go for my walks. With all the energy that I had, I’ve been trying to keep up with exercises that are supposed to help with the birth. If you read my previous post about Pregnancy Self Care, I wrote about how I’ve been swimming/walking/climbing stairs. I feel that swimming has really helped to reduce all the aches that I’ve been having – like SI joint pain, SPD and lower back aches. They’re not totally gone, but definitely more manageable to the point that I actually stopped my prenatal massages for a few months because I felt that swimming was so much more effective!
3rd tri was also when I realised that time was really running short and that I had to get my shit together and start prepping for baby! xD Having procrastinated through the 2nd tri, I had to bite the bullet and decide what exactly I wanted to buy. The good thing was that this coincided with 10.10, 11.11, Black Friday and generally all of those year-end sales periods. So I had deliveries coming in every day for a good few weeks and managed to get everything pretty much set up within a month. Nesting instincts have also propelled me to do a spring clean of the house, which I guess is rather timely as we’ve moved into our place for just about a year! Decided to do a major clean as much as I can in our house before baby comes along and we get overwhelmed.
Baby-wise, it’s been incredible to see her exponential growth through the growth of my belly and feeling her movements. From being really elusive whenever I tried to capture her movements on camera, my belly began to ripple and wobble vigorously with all her movements. She’s been moving so much more which brings me so much unexplainable joy :’) This then evolved further to actually begin to feel quite uncomfortable, again from week 36 onwards. There are nights when she’s partying in my belly and the constant squirming prevents me from falling asleep. Nonetheless, I still feel like it’s such an immense privilege to be able to carry this baby in my belly :’) I wouldn’t trade it for the world. The constant movements give me relief knowing that she’s active and kicking in there and I simply love this precious connection with my baby girl.
Any time now! I’m so excited to meet her face-to-face soon :*)