The Pregnancy Diaries: The second trimester

I am only just getting around to finishing this post which seems crazy considering I am currently holding our baby boy in my arms whilst editing this. I intended to post this when my second trimester came to an end at the end of August but time just seemed to disappear and as you will find out in the next instalment of the pregnancy diaries [The Third Trimester], we only made it to week 35 of pregnancy and things have just been crazy ever since! In the previous instalment of the pregnancy diaries I covered weeks 12-20. This post is going to give a quick recap of the first half of the second trimester and I’ll also cover weeks 20-28.

For me, the second trimester fell between the months of May - August which meant this year I got treated to the joys of pregnancy in a heatwave, actually, multiple heatwaves! My top tip for anyone experiencing pregnancy in the summer months is invest in a Stanley cup, fill it with ice and water and take it EVERYWHERE you go! Accidentally leaving the house without it genuinely felt like the world was going to end. Despite the heat, the second trimester was actually my favourite one by far. Any nausea I’d had in the first trimester disappeared by week 12 and my bump grew relatively slowly so I never felt too uncomfortable in the heat. That’s not to say that the second trimester came without it’s challenges!

The second trimester scans

If you’ve not already read my post on the first trimester, this next bit might not make sense out of context. For those who are reading this without reading the previous post, what I am about ot talk about refers to something called a Chorionic bump that was found on a very early scan we had at 6 weeks due to bleeding. A chorionic bump is a rare finding on an ultrasound scan characterised by a convex bulge into the gestational sac. The outcome of this finding is generally associated with first trimester miscarriage. During the first trimester we had scans at 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 10 weeks and 12 weeks to monitor the progression of the chorionic bump. In the first three scans the bump had remained the main topic of discussion but at our 12 week NHS scan, the sonogpaher didn’t even mention the bump. Obviously we asked about it as it felt strange that something that was painted as a potentially fatal finding just weeks prior was now not even a topic of conversation. The sonographer confirmed that they had seen the chorionic bump on the screen but it was nothing to be worried about as it had reduced in size and the baby was developing as expected and measuring perfectly. Although we had just been told that the Chorionic bump no longer posed a risk to the viability of the pregnancy, the anxiety we had experienced during the first trimester didn’t disappear for a while. We had another private scan at 14 weeks, a private gender scan at 17 weeks and then the NHS 20 week scan. The 14 week scan helped to begin to ease our anxieties as they also confirmed that the Chorionic bump had shrunk further and had almost disappeared. Again, the sonographer confirmed that the baby was thriving and was continuing to grow perfectly. At the 17 week scan gender scan we found out we were having a little boy! We decided not to tell anyone that we were finding out the gender as we wanted to keep a little something to ourselves. We just told people that we were waiting until the baby was born to find out their gender. Although not everyone believed that we hadn’t found out the gender, we stuck to our guns and insisted that we were not going to find out. This is something that I am so glad we did and would definatly do again in future pregnancies. The chorionic bump had disappeared and our little boy was doing amazing. We then has our 20 week NHS scan where they measure baby head to toe! All the measurements they could get had baby boy measuring on the 65th centile. However, baby was being very difficult and wouldn’t stretch out his legs for the sonographer to get all her measurements! This meant we had to come back a week later in the hope that the baby would co-operate this time! Luckily for us, after a lot of jumping around and shaking, baby boy stretched out his little (really long) legs! We finally had all the measurements we needed to tick off. Usually this would be the last scan you have on the NHS but for us we actually needed to have some growth scans in the third trimester at weeks 32, 36 and 40 due to some pre-existing health conditions I have. If we hadn’t required this extra scans I imagine I may have booked one final private scan just for reassurance.

Weeks 20-28

For us, the last half of the second trimester was throughout July and August. Luckily for me, working as a nanny means you often get a lot of time off in the summer whilst your nanny family travel. The family I work for normally go away the last two weeks of August which means me and my partner usually plan a big trip at the same time. Last year we travelled to Singapore, Bali and Vietnam. This year we spent most of those two weeks with me sat on the sofa or in bed sleeping and complaining that everything hurt! The family I work for ended up going away for the majority of the 8 week summer holiday this year as they had some remaining paternity and maternity leave to use up from the birth of their daughter last November. This was a major blessing for me being pregnant this year as it allowed me to relax properly and rest whilst I transitioned into the third trimester. Towards the end of the second trimester I began to experience a lot of back pain and just general exhaustion. Throughout my whole pregnancy exhaustion is what affected me the most. My sleep was extremely disturbed by constantly needing the toilet and being awake for hours on end feeling like I’d drank 3 coffees before bed.

Peanut app

Me and my partner are the first in either of our friendship groups and families to have a baby. Where we live in West London we are also considered young parents at 26 and 28 so finding parents of a similar age near us has also proved difficult. Whilst we are beyond excited to start this new chapter, we are apprehensive of how it might be slightly isolating at times having a baby when no one else around us does. To meet other parents most people turn to antenatal classes. We decided against doing any antenatal classes for a number of reasons. One being the cost. In our area the only in person classes were going to cost around £300 and any NHS classes are online and take place at a time that is not accessible to us. We considered spending the money on classes as we thought it would be beneficial to meet people locally who are expecting at the same time as us but another reason we decided against the classes was the lack of other people our age who were expecting in the area. Whilst it’s not essential for other parents to be the same age as us to form connections, we felt that we would be able to relate more to people who like us may also be the first in their friendship group to be expecting or other people who hadn’t planned to start a family at this age. This is when I turned to the app Peanut. I had heard about this app through social media and some nanny’s I know through work. In my second trimester I thought it would be a good time to explore the app as I had the majority of the summer off. I will be honest, it is quite a strange thing to start messaging people you don’t know based on the fact they are also expecting a baby. It almost feels like online dating for pregnant people! It can be slightly time consuming messaging a lot of other expectant mums trying to form connections with someone else in the hope that you can meet for brunch or go for a walk. Between juggling the symptoms of pregnancy with everyday life and trying to make friends online I found it quite difficult to uphold conversations that turned into anything more. However, I have met a couple of girls my age who have young babies or are expecting at similar times to us. It has been so lovely meeting these girls who cam relate to the same experiences me and my partner are currently going through. Without this app I really don’t know how I would’ve started to meet anyone in the same situation as us.

Baby prep

Baby preparations in our house are in full force. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that our baby will be sharing a room with us for the foreseeable, until we move out of our current flat and most likely out of London. We are making the most of the space we have and have created a little corner in the bedroom that will be just for baby boy when he arrives. We purchased a wardrobe for him in the early summer so I could start washing and sorting out all of his clothes so they aren’t just existing in boxes and bags around the apartment! We decided to purchase the IKEA pax wardrobe so we could customise the inside with drawers and rails that suit our needs. When we first moved into our apartment we created a walk in wardrobe in the bedroom using the IKEA pax system so we already love this wardrobe and we knew it would be perfect for all of baby boys things. To make the wardrobe more special and personal I purchased some wallpaper and covered the wardrobe in it. To do this I simply applied double sided tape around the perimeter of the wardrobe sides and applied the wallpaper to each panel. We then moved onto the cot. Again we went for an IKEA cot. Originally we liked the idea of buying a cot system that would carry our baby through multiple transitions from cot, to cot bed, to single bed. However for financial reasons and practical reasons of having a small one bed apartment we decided to just purchase the basic IKEA beech, 60x120 cm crib. This opened up some options of customisation. We spent a long time choosing a paint colour that best matched the wallpaper we had chosen for the wardrobe. It is important to note that if you are wanting to paint a crib for your baby it is essential to find a non-toxic baby safe paint to ensure you’re little one doesn’t ingest any toxins when they inevitably start chewing on the cot when they’re older. We went for the Little Greene child-safe paint as they had the best array of colours that suited our requirements. The colour we chose was Bronze Red in an intelligent satin finish. The colour painted on beautifully and only required one coat. The IKEA crib doesn’t require any sanding or preparation for painting so it was a quick and easy job to tick off the list. The next thing on my list was to sew together a cot skirt to hide all the clutter I knew we would end up storing under the crib. For this I choose to use the William Morris Willow Bough Tapestry fabric from my favourite online fabric shop, oh sew crafty. This project has been very time consuming and is yet to be finished! For anyone interested in creating something similar for their little one I am going to create a short blog post on a tutorial specific to creating a cot skirt for the IKEA crib, I will however include guidance on how to adapt the pattern to fit other sized cots. The final thing on my list for completing baby boys corner is creating a small gallery wall that contains prints and pieces that compliment the colours we have chosen for the cot and the wallpaper, injecting some colour and pattern into the space. This is something that we are going to take our time over to find pieces that are perfect and reflective of our personality. We have chosen a handful of bobbin frames from Dunelm in the colours Ashley blue and white which we have since painted in the same Bronze Red paint as the crib, We have also bought two wooden frames that I have painted in stripes of bright pink and again the same Bronze Red paint as the crib. We are still in the process of choosing the perfect prints to put in these frames and I have begun searching for a small shelf to incorporate into the gallery wall.

With all the decorating and aesthetics under control, we also need to start thinking about the practical items this baby is going to need. Throughout my pregnancy I have been slowly collecting items such as nappies and wipes or books and clothes to spread the cost across a few months so we didn’t end up spending a large proportion of our wages on baby items at the end of the pregnancy. We are having a baby shower in September when we are 32 weeks and have created a registry using the website My Crib which we have included in our invites so any guests wanting to make a purchase for our little boy can do so from a curated list of things that we still need to buy. This has been really useful for separating between the things we want and things we actually need, After our baby shower we will then have a list of the things we still need to buy before the baby arrives and we can spread out the purchases over the remaining weeks of the pregnancy. On the list we have included practical items like nappies and wipes but also some toys and books we specifically picked out that encourage babies development. With my job as a nanny I have inherited a lot of items from the families I have worked for ranging from clothes to breast pumps! Creating this list will hopefully ensure we don’t end up with an influx of baby items we already have or ones that won’t get used or wasted, especially when living in a small apartment with limited space.