Baby Girl, We’re Half-Way There!
This week I will officially be 22 weeks pregnant which means two weeks ago, Thursday to be exact, I hit the halfway mark in growing our baby girl. I am five months pregnant and it has been a whirlwind. There are some days I can’t remember not being pregnant and then there are some days I look in the mirror and it blows my mind that I’m growing this tiny human.
With that being said I thought for this post I’d update Y’all on everything. Mood, cravings, body changes, routines, how we’re preparing for our little one to arrive. There may be some things in this post that can be considered TMI so let this be that waring now. Because let me tell you while pregnancy can be a wonderful thing, and it is I really am blessed, there are also so many not so pretty sides to it all.
My mood swings are one of them. I was super sensitive before the baby. Now it is 100x worse. Things that shouldn’t matter set me off and sometimes I just cry for no reason. And then there are the days that are actually bad days and I just kinda lose it and only go home and sleep it off.
There’s also the symptoms, everyone says that the first trimester symptoms tend to fade the further you progress but I feel like mine all just carried over. I still had morning sickness up to about 19 weeks and I still get that never-ending pit in my stomach some days. And the bone-deep tiredness that doesn’t seem to fade no matter how often I sleep. Although that can now more or less be because of the fact there is no comfortable way to sleep once the baby hits a certain size.
Other symptoms are things like this itchy feeling in the back of my throat that randomly comes and goes, a super sense of smell, I am forgetting literally everything these days, I always seem to be out of breath even if I’m not doing anything. My skin is so dry and no amount of moisturizes can even begin to help it. Oh, and let’s not forget that my back aches all the time.
A lot of this has to do with my body changing at a rapid rate. My tummy, in my opinion, has officially popped. Some days I feel so huge and I’m only 1/2 of the way. Babygirl was quite a bit more growing to do before she can make her appearance into the world.
One side effect to being pregnant that hit me out of nowhere was body image. It’s not something people generally like to talk about so we don’t but I hadn’t been prepared on what that can do to you. Yes, I obviously was aware my body would change, I’m growing a person! I just didn’t know I would wake up some mornings and just not like what I saw.
There are mornings when I look at myself and I don’t recognize the person I see. I loved getting ready, like the whole nines, and now I just find it to be such a hassle. Every once in a while it will hit me and I’ll have a mini breakdown about it but Brandon has been so so good to me in all this. He’s always constantly reminding me and telling me I’m beautiful. It’s hard growing another person, but it’s getting easier as the days go on.
What I’ve found helps a lot is getting back into a routine of sorts. I feel out of one for a while simply because I had a rough first half. Honestly, it’s so surprising how much the little things can help improve your mood. Things like going to bed early so I can get up and put more time into my hair or make up that day. Or washing all the clothes on Sundays, reading a book in the bath, adjusting my skincare routine to help with the baby breakouts. Or even just going to get my nails done with my mama on Saturdays like we used to. These small things help me feel more like myself.
While we aren’t officially in countdown mode yet the pressure is on to make sure everything is ready in time come May. We’ve got a few of the basics covered and most things are set in place. We haven’t gotten around to setting everything up just yet but we still have time, plus I’m waiting on a few extra pieces before we dive into all that fun.
The last thing I want to touch on is the products I’ve been using that I’ve found helpful so far in my pregnancy. First is this belly butter. While I know there is no cure-all for stretch marks, I find this helps somewhat. I have them around my breast but nowhere else for now but I have noticed a difference. It also doesn’t smell as strongly as the others I have tried.
I finally caved and got a pregnancy pillow and wow, it made, I wouldn’t say huge difference, but I noticeably slept better after I found a comfortable position. Although I do turn a lot for the most part in my sleep so I like it better for naps than full-on sleep for the most part. Now, these were something I never would have thought to buy but I noticed my normal underwear could become uncomfortable throughout the day.
There are plenty more products I’ve found I love to help but I’m thinking about doing a whole post on that in its self so I’ll save those for another time, and with
With love,
Brittany Michelle