The Second Trimester

*Please note that this is an account of MY personal journey whilst pregnant with my first child. Please be discerning. Everyone has a completely unique experience.*

The second trimester is from Week 13 to the end of Week 26.

TELLING THE WORLD

We kept it pretty hush hush with only close family & friends ‘in on it’ until sharing the news on the gram at 14 weeks. This was a shit tonne of fun as we completely surprised a whole lot of people! Could not have possibly anticipated the immense outpouring of love (!)

THIS. GIRL. IS. ON. FIRE.

At around 19-20 weeks my energy picked back up from the first trimester slump and I became absolutely ON FIRE. I was turned ON by life (also in the bedroom, in a big way, even waking up my partner in the middle of the night if you know what I mean….) I felt like I was hitting my stride! This time saw me 1:1 mentoring, group mentoring, running online courses, writing eBooks, teaching yoga & even putting my hand up to cover extra yoga classes!

Don’t get me wrong, I was still napping every day and taking the most delicious care of myself (my secret ;) Something about being pregnant made me cut the *noise* and the crap. I think the renewed discovery of what was actually important to me and having no capacity for anything outside of that, gave me more energy and focus to stay in my lane.

What’s more, I had a clear financial goal ~ I wanted to pay for every cent of my home birth. So earning decent money at this time was for a greater cause, which gave me extra motivation to create & execute in my work.

A BEAUTIFUL MESS

A classic preggaz dummy spit of tired & hungry

Okay so let’s be clear, just because I was on fire in Trimester Two, doesn’t mean I wasn’t a total #preggaz mess at times. When people would ask me how pregnancy had been “a beautiful mess” was my answer. This felt like the best description for it !

Before being pregnant as you may know I’d been living by my menstrual cycle for about four years straight. My whole life was in harmony with the seasons of my cycle. Although there were slight changes each month it was pretty textbook in that I knew the patterns which gave a sense of predictability and comfort.

When I got pregnant it was like ‘hey, where’s my map?!’ But fo realz it seems I actually had no idea how I was going to feel til I woke up. It so beautifully brought me back to the magic of day to day, moment to moment living with my body as boss. Some days I found I would want to do stuff, see peeps, be in the world. Lots of the time I liked best staring in to space, listening to music, drinking cocao, napping, eating vegemite on toast, looking at the trees, massaging my belly, processing the shifts, meditating & watch rom coms. My mascy (masculine energy) struggled with this but my femme (feminine energy) was totally calling all of the shots.

The meltdowns; yes sometimes they were attributed to most likely hormones, tiredness or hunger. And then other times they were related to the massive shifts I was processing. So being in that “mess” and just allowing the emotion to move through me, even if I didn’t exactly “know” what it was about was a really important part of my pregnancy. If I didn’t allow myself to feel it, it would always show up in another way ~ getting louder and louder until I did.

The beauty was also in that connection I felt with my own emotions. It felt like every day a new part of my Heart was being cracked open. Just the thought of things like; seeing my partner with our baby for the first time would have me welling up on the reg.

HEIGHTENED SENSITIVITY + INTUITION

Did someone say SENSI AF?! Ha! Lucky I’ve done the work to Claim my Sensitivity as a Superpower ;) I found I was easily triggered and got “people’d” a whole lot quicker. I clearly remember a friend telling a joke and not finding it one inch funny, it wasn’t rude or anything, just not funny. I just looked them in the eye and said “no”. Like I just didn’t even have the capacity to fluff that shit up or give a shit sandwich. Just “no”.

There was nothing quite like “asking baby” or my “womb” to give me straight up answers to life’s big and small questions. My intuition was so strong whilst pregnant it felt cut throat at times. Like nowhere to hide. I had to let go of anything that was not a full body yes. Every area of my life was touched by this, the clearing was relentless, challenging at times and LIBERATING !

CRAVINGS

Fruit. It was summer during my second trimester, watermelon was a particular fave!!!

THE CLEANING + NESTING URGE IS A REAL THING

I’d often heard about the strong urge for “nesting” and “cleaning” leading up to the baby’s arrival but for me it was already there in Trimester Two. I like things to be clean (my partner might argue otherwise) but this was a whole ‘nother level. You know how you have basic cleans you do most weeks like bathroom, sweep/vaccum floors, clean kitchen? Well, pregnancy had me doing all those “random” cleaning jobs. Like all of a sudden see some dirt on a kitchen cupboard in a hard to reach place and cannot rest until it is clean. I recall spending a week cleaning our whole kitchen cupboard and moving all our staples to jars. There were a number of days I actually “did myself in” like got to the end of the day and had exhausted myself because I’d just got in a cleaning frenzy and could not would not stop until it was done. It kind of feels like you’re possessed. The satisfaction was real. Until you thought of another cleaning task.

I also became a Marketplace fanatic. All of a sudden making the home as cosy, warm n fuzzy as possible became a higher priority. Throughout the day I would send items I’d found online to Matt. He had asked me to stop annoying him with it but I literally couldn’t help myself. I would even write “I know I’m being annoying and crazy but I can’t stop and could you just look at THIS?”. Haha.

MOVEMENT

My faves during pregnancy were yoga + nature walks and I did both most days. Also swimming / floating at the beach was a highlight - being weightless = amazing !!!

My midwife recommended Spinning Babies, I did their yoga flow or my own variation of it, most days during the second and third trimester.

My body handled the pregnancy like a #boss, I hardly experienced ANY pain throughout. Just little niggles here and there, say if I’d overdone the cleaning ;)

FRIENDSHIPS

Something I noticed even in preparation for conception stage, was that my energy was changing. Things I used to care so much about, not so much. Having a baby is a huge change and a huge awakening! So naturally, our preferences change and so too, do our friendships.

Some friendships drifted and others became stronger. New connections arrived and went deeper. There was no rhyme or reason to this, just something I felt I had to honour and communicate as delicately as I could. There’s no rulebook or map for navigating this sort of stuff, it’s hard. But I think it’s really important to honour. People come in to our life for a reason, a season or a lifetime, eh? Trust your instincts with this, since they are so fine tuned during pregnancy & will never lead you astray.

CHOOSING CARE PROVIDER

As I mentioned in Trimester One blog, from the start I had visions of birthing at home. My partner on the other hand was more on the “It’s safer, free, makes sense and we live five minutes from the hospital” side of the fence.

Whatever we decided, I wanted for us to come to it together wholeheartedly, so we compromised by exploring both options. Early on (around 8 weeks) I went by myself to meet with a homebirth private midwife but it didn’t feel quite right with her, we just didn’t fully ‘click’.

At the 12 week mark, we had two important appointments in one week - one at our local hospital and one with a private homebirth midwife. I knew that based on how both appointments went would inform our decision.

First up, we met in a cafe in the city with the private midwife. I had done my research and walked in a savvy pregnant woman, with forty questions to ask her, everything under the sun from “how many cervical checks do you perform?” “are you okay/encouraging of a woman making a sound?” “what resuscitation equipment do you carry?” and even “why is homebirth so expensive?”. Let’s just say she hardly took a bite of her lunch under my investigation. But she impressed the hell out of us with her confidence in herself, her philosophy on birth (which matched what I’d been reading), the fact that she had overseen 300 births at home and that she had such a warm nature. I also loved the little touches, like that she congratulated us and hugged when we first met and as we left. I thought to myself that this was who I would like to have alongside me if we went down the homebirth track.

Later in the week off we went to the hospital. We took a number and sat in the crowded waiting room to be called up. One of the midwives ushered us into a meeting room and proceeded to spend the next 90 minutes “talking at us”. No congratulations, no warmth, it was all business and all fear and anxiety, to be honest. The general tone was “this could go wrong” oh and “this will go wrong” and “be ready for this” and “don’t do this”. I remember when they were filling out our details, the woman asked Matt’s name and phone number and then said “that’s the end of you, Dad, it’s all about the Mum”. I know it was an off the hand comment but it broke my heart a little….

We walked out of that hospital meeting in a daze and Matt turned to me and said “if you want to do the homebirth, I’m right on board, let’s do it, I’d rather not come back here”. My smile was THAT WIDE. We were on the same page and I was stoked.

A few things I want to note here;

My personal situation is that I was completely healthy & categorised as low risk, which is why homebirth was a safe choice for me
I believe there are great and not-so great homebirth AND hospital midwives out there, just like every industry
We live five minutes from the hospital so this was also a contributing factor in that 15-20% of homebirths are transferred to hospital, so I knew if we needed it, the interventions we may require were there and were close. Had we lived hours away from hospital, it might’ve been a different decision
Homebirth IS expensive, all in all I invested $10,000; this includes working with my doula, midwife & chiro who made up my support team. Pretty much every cent I made during pregnancy was put towards it.
Lastly, some advice - do your research, ask questions of other Mamas, explore your options and then, GO WITH YOUR INTUITION. Always! Once you are informed & have all the information, you will know what is best for you and your baby. They call it Mother’s Instinct - trust yourself.

The Third Trimester

The First Trimester