Okay, so can we talk about the fact that 26 weeks equals somewhere between 6 and 7 months pregnant?! I feel like measuring by months is slightly more “old fashioned” – at least, when I talk to people who haven’t been recently pregnant, they ask how many months I am and it takes me a minute to work out. So when I worked out that 26 weeks is over the 6 month mark, I was shocked. 6 months sounds heavily pregnant, doesn’t it?! At 26 weeks though, I’m in that strange stage of feeling like huge and pregnant is all I am some days, but still feeling small compared to other women at the same stage on other days. You just can’t win!
Also can someone explain the trimesters?! Like first to second trimester, there’s no clear guideline on when you enter third trimester. Some places say 26 weeks is third trimester, others say 27, others say end of 28 – who knows?! 26 weeks has felt like quite a transition week for me though – I’ve started with new and quite persistent pain as well as feeling a lot more tired. I think the second trimester “honeymoon” is over for me now and I’m entering the stage of discomfort, boo!
So recently at work, I’ve been getting organised for maternity leave. It seems crazy to have started planning work for while I’m off at 24 weeks, but I had two reasons: I wanted to be prepared just in case I ended up having to leave early (I plan to work until about 37 weeks if I can), and also because we’ve got Christmas thrown right in the middle of my third trimester. In my job, I manage my own clients and we work on a month-by-month basis for these, meaning that December is always a super busy month anyway as we squash our usual work into a lot less time. It meant that I wanted to get started on prep for it early, plus prep for next year.
So on Thursday of 26 weeks, I had my final planning meeting for my clients for 2019 and got all my plans set. The rest of the week, I started work on the 2019 stuff. Possessive of my clients, much?!
I also found out that in one of these planning meetings that one of my colleagues was born at 24 weeks. This was crazy as I realised that would mean I would have a 2 week old baby by now that was potentially viable – eek! I mean, I already knew she was viable from all the app notifications, but hearing it in real terms is just…weird!
Thursday also marked my sister’s birthday so we headed over to their house that evening and went out for tea at a local moorland pub. Despite ordering my sister’s “signature” meal there – chicken parmesan – with proper chips, and eating cake when we got back, I still had room for more. Yep, the appetite’s still going strong!
That day also marked the beginning of something that’s plagued me the last couple of weeks: SPD and pelvic girdle pain. I started with pain in my tailbone throughout the day while sitting in my chair, which got worse all day and evening. By the time we want to bed, it was SO SORE. When I went on one of my four nightly toilet trips, I realised I could barely even get out of bed or walk – I managed eventually but nearly had to wake Ben up to help me! Then when I got back in bed, something popped in my lower back and the pain basically went away. I thought that might be it and I’d just trapped a nerve or something…but no.
On Friday, the pain started again while sat at work, argh. This is when I looked it up and realised it was probably SPD and pelvic girdle pain. Like I said, it’s still ongoing now and is absolutely no fun.
That day was Black Friday, so it was kind of a crazy end of the week for me as I write an an annual Black Friday lingerie article at BCLC rounding up all the deals – I love doing it but it’s super hard work. Instead of putting my usual Black Friday budget towards lingerie, this year it went towards the baby – so grown up! We bought the car seat base we’d been waiting to go on sale for a while, a breast pump, a wooden baby gym, some nursery wall decals, and a wooden camera toy….and a rug for the cat. Okay, so this is an odd one! We already had this specific rug from Next in our bedroom and both we and the cat love it – Belle sleeps on it most nights! It was hugely reduced and I was sure we could fit in somewhere in our house…my only impulse buy in months though!
That evening, we went to Harvester and the cinema to see the second Fantastic Beasts film to celebrate Beth’s birthday. It was prettyyyy painful but I survived. I enjoyed the film – it had some awesome effects but I feel there were points were the storyline was a little lacking. It also totally bewildered the rest of my family who aren’t really Harry Potter fans!
Saturday was very exciting – it was our first hypnobirthing session!! I’ll talk in more detail about this soon as I’ve got so much to say about it, but if you’re interested in knowing my very first thoughts on it, check out this post on my birth plan here.
In the afternoon, it was time for house chores and a bath. The seats at hynobirthing were super uncomfortable – not just because of my SPD, everyone agreed! – so bath was totally necessary. We also baked cookies that afternoon; this is something I want to do all the time at the moment – is it a nesting thing?! The week before was chocolate orange cupcakes!
On Sunday, we went to Wilko’s for Oxiclean (wow, exciting times!) then called at Ben’s parent’s house before going on to mine to meet the new kittens!!
After leaving them, I had a busy afternoon/evening, finally creating our wedding album and ordering the vast majority of our Christmas presents.
On Monday I decided it was time to try and combat the back/pelvic pain with my standing desk at work, but sadly it didn’t work all that well. In fact, I ended up working up at home on Tuesday and Wednesday as my pelvic pain was so bad. SPD is no joke and it’s not even something I’d really heard of before getting pregnant! Ben ended up taking me to Frankie & Benny’s as a bit of a treat because I was so fed up with the pain and not really able to cook – considering I love doing this, it was so frustrating.
And finally on Wednesday, despite only being 26 weeks pregnant, I panicked about my hospital bag and started creating list of what I didn’t and didn’t have, what I still needed to find and shopping lists for it. A bit early, I know, but like I said, I like to be prepared!
