The Second Trimester

It’s hard to believe that at 35 weeks of pregnancy, I’m just getting around to writing about the second trimester. But such is life. Although the first trimester seemed to drag on, the second trimester seemed to fly by.

While the nausea of the first trimester thankfully retreated around week 14, the fatigue remained. I did get a few weeks of reprieve, but I didn’t take nearly enough advantage of it before the fatigue came back full force and even worse than before.

They say the second trimester is the “honeymoon” period and I guess in a way, it is. I wasn’t at the totally uncomfortable stage yet.

And while lupus and RA have continued to lay low, at around the end of second trimester, I started to feel that my immune system was starting to become overactive. Like it was trying to tell me that it had been accepting of this uninvited guest for seven-ish months, but not so much anymore. It felt like my nerve endings were sometimes on fire. And I kind of had that feeling of being tired and run down, almost coming down with something but never actually getting sick.

As far as symptoms in the second trimester, like I said, good old fatigue was back in full force, along with severe heartburn (thanks baby hair) and itching (more on that in another post; forthcoming).

As far as cravings, French fries continued, along with potato chips and popcorn. Plus protein. I’ve never been one to eat protein without a bun, but I often found myself going for straight protein (the plant-based kind, of course). Iced tea was the other thing that I majorly craved, and not just because it was summer.

Though there was nothing I wanted so bad that I woke my husband up in the middle of the night and in the most Veruca Salt-y way said “I want this, and I WANT IT NOW.” I’m sure he was relieved that there were never any middle of the night runs to the store. But we definitely have learned that our son’s carb addiction is no joke. I hope he’ll still want to eat potatoes when the time comes.

The only aversion I really experienced was to coffee still. But I anticipate that once the baby is here and I am sleep deprived, coffee will definitely be a staple in my life once again.

One thing we weren’t quite expecting was the frequency of appointments and the level of surveillance that would start in the second trimester and continue through the third trimester. Looking back, it makes sense given the high risk nature of this pregnancy, but we didn’t feel fully informed or prepared when it was sprung on us that we’d be seeing the high risk OB every other week until 30 weeks and then weekly after that, along with having fetal echocardiograms from the beginning of the second trimester every other week until 28 weeks and then a final one at 32 weeks.

For me, pregnancy has been harder than I expected. While my autoimmune stuff has been mostly quiet, my body pretty much hasn’t felt like my own the entire time.