The Second and Third Trimester

I'm writing this months after the fact (even though I'm post-dating it...), so unfortunately some of the details are a little hazy.

My morning sickness went away around 12 weeks just like it did with Chandler, which was fantastic! I did not get the second trimester energy boost, however. I was incredibly tired all the time. But I didn't have any bleeding scares, so I'll take it!

Also unlike with Chandler, my cramping wasn't too bad. I definitely had some, but it wasn't quite as frequent or as intense.

I did have pretty much the same food cravings as I did in my first pregnancy: really good salads and chocolate donut holes! But I didn't get to indulge the donut one very often.

One thing that WAS different this pregnancy was that I did get heartburn a little more frequently.

The best part of the second trimester was, of course, finding out the gender. Josh took the afternoon off on August 11th and Mom came to help us with Chandler and be there for the big news! Luckily, baby cooperated and we found out we were having a little girl! We could not have been more thrilled.

Towards the end of the second trimester and the beginning of the third, I had terrible sciatica. I would get shooting pains in my way lower back so bad that there were times I could barely walk. I was afraid it was going to late the duration of the pregnancy, but fortunately, she must have moved or something so it ended up going away!

Josh was able to feel her kick the first time around 20 weeks again. It's always hard to be sure what you're feeling really early, but I think I was feeling her as early as 15 weeks or so! It's always so exciting to feel the baby move around...it makes it feel so much more real and like you're really carrying a baby!

In the third trimester, I was still super tired, and that was my biggest symptom. Baby continued to get stronger and give harder little kicks. She was pretty active, but not quite as energetic as Chandler (but he was crazy active!).

Towards the end of the trimester, she was up in my upper right ribs a lot, which was pretty uncomfortable. I was experiencing some round ligament pain, but again, not as intense as Chandler, which makes sense because she weighed a lot less.

As far as might weight goes, I gained about as much as I did in my first pregnancy; about 25 pounds.

Here is baby at the end of October:

And here's me:

At my 30 week appointment, I was measuring between 2 and 3 weeks behind, so they ordered an ultrasound. My amniotic fluid was fine, and she was measuring in the 30th percentile so everything was fine. But then at each appointment I was measuring a little further behind. By week 36, I was measuring 4 weeks behind but they couldn't get me in for an ultrasound until week 37. When we finally had the ultrasound, they said that the baby was experiencing Intrauterine Growth Restriction, which meant the baby was measuring small because she wasn't getting the nutrition and oxygen she needed. This meant that they had to get her out. Since I'd had a c-section before, they weren't allowed to induce me, so all hopes of my VBAC went out the window. They were saying the estimated baby to be about 4.5 pounds. One of our friends had been told the same thing and he was born at a normal birthweight, so we knew there was a chance that their measurements were off. But the bottom line was that we couldn't gamble with our baby's life, so we scheduled to have the c-section the day I turned 38 weeks, which was 3 days later. We spent the weekend quickly finishing our Christmas shopping and buying teeny tiny baby clothes to prepare.

These ultrasounds were taken 3 days before she was born:

These last pictures were taken the day before she was born!