There are 4. Not 3.
The 1st trimester is the one we are all familiar with. This is the one you hear everyone talk about. The nausea, fatigue, the concern about getting through the 1st 12 weeks. These are all of the things that happened during the first trimester and for that reason the first trimester is pretty stressful.
You’re going for scans…., but you can’t tell anybody.
You’re hoping that the little blob inside you continues to grow and that every time you go, there’s a little heartbeat there…. But you just don’t know and you don’t know anything about it yet. It’s still just a blob. It’s not a person.
Other than the ever present anxiety the first trimester was fairly OK. I had nausea from about six weeks. Didn’t throw up too much. However, the first trimester doesn’t finish until about week 14 so it’s not 12 weeks it’s 14 weeks. Believe me, every day already feels like a week…. Thankfully by the end of the first trimester for me at least the nausea started to tail off and I began to feel a bit more human. By this point though, you’re definitely starting to look pregnant so it’s now time to tell everybody and so into the second Trimester…
The second trimester is when you get the ‘glow’. Apparently. I did not get a glow. I felt OK for about four weeks I think, and then week 18 I started getting so much mucus. Sorry not sorry. I started vomiting, probably two or three times a week and the food aversions that I developed in the first trimester (as opposed to the oft reported food cravings) continued and got worse so there were weeks when I just didn’t really want to eat anything, which was kind of good in terms of keeping the weight under control I suppose. ..
Another thing that happened towards the end of the second trimester for me was I developed carpal tunnel syndrome. So for being an avid knitter and having just finished two jumpers for my nieces and looking forward to making something for what we now knew was a little girl I couldn’t, I couldn’t move my hands. I started having to wear wrist splints that looked like I was about to go rollerblading all the time, which made conference calls at work very amusing. I couldn’t type very long. I couldn’t do anything really. I couldn’t open bottles. I looked particularly special, but in terms of the side effects from the 2nd trimester for me it wasn’t great. From vomiting every two or three days, along with carpal tunnel and the fact that i was getting bigger and bigger that sleep became much more difficult too plus I was cheated of my bloody glow. So that’s false advertising.
And onto the third trimester, the beginning of the third trimester. We were in Crete, which was very lovely, except that lying on a sun lounger when you’re pregnant isn’t that fun. You can’t lie on your front, and I also found that I couldn’t swim very much because again, of the carpal tunnel, my hands would just seize up so I couldn’t really go very far. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get back. And then at the end of our time in Crete, when I was 28 weeks pregnant, they started having a debate about whether I was allowed on the plane, which was slightly nerve wracking. I was wondering about how I would go back to the Netherlands over land at 28 weeks pregnant, but thankfully that didn’t have to happen. Another thing that happens in your third trimester as you start to think okay, I’m pretty big now. No, no no, you get really, really big. You start to think that you can’t move around, but you don’t know how much worse its still going to get! By about 30/32 weeks it starts to get difficult, but you don’t really appreciate how much harder it’s going to get week on week… Your feet swell up. You can’t reach your toes. Thank God I was pregnant in the summer because I’ve no idea how I would get shoes on in the winter I lived in flip flops for months! So yeah. And then the end of the third trimester is the birth, and I’ll talk about that in a different blog, because otherwise I’m rambling on far too long.
But I said there were four trimesters. So what did I mean? Do I mean I managed to stay pregnant for an extra three months? No, they call the first three months of the babies being out in the world the 4th trimester because you’re both still sort of getting used to each other. So the only reason that babies are born after nine months? (It’s not actually nine months, it’s 10, and you feel all of them, false advertising again!) The only reason is because of our pelvis narrowed in order to enable us to walk upright, so, in order for babies to be born safely they’re born before they’re really ready, before they’re fully cooked, if you like. So the first three months of a babies life are really like having this 4th trimester and it also happens to be about the amount of time that it takes you to start to feel a semblance of your normal self. So yeah, the 4th trimester.
Weirdly, you think you’re going to be fine after a few days and every week you go. Oh yeah, no. Now I feel a bit more myself, but it’s not until you get towards the end of the fourth trimester that you really start to feel a bit more like yourself. And I’m sure that in a few months time I’ll look back and think, yeah, I really wasn’t myself even then.
So, four trimesters. Each of them something different to offer. The happy thing is in the 4th trimester, my carpal tunnel seems to have nearly gone and no more vomiting, so that’s nice.