Aw, the third trimester has arrived. I remember getting here my last time around and thinking "WOW! It's so close! I'm having a baby so soon". What a naive little thing I was. The third trimester is a lot like the third Lord of the Rings movie. You keep thinking you're close to the end, but really you still have an hour of video coming at you with a bunch of parts that seem like good endings. The big difference here is that watching LOTR for an extra hour is all things awesome while watching yourself become increasingly large and uncomfortable is much less entertaining.
I do really love how fun it is to feel a human being roll around inside my belly. The bigger they get (and me) the more amazed I am that there is someone in there.
I am way bigger than last time which is already causing a bit of anxiety over here. I don't weigh anymore than I did at this point, but that could easily change. I'm sooo hungry this time around. I distinctly remember having a reemergence of food hate in the third trimester with Row. If only that could happen now. I have dreams about food (mostly Cafe Rio) and wake up depressed when I realized it was all a cruel trick and Cafe Rio is still hundreds of miles away.I got SO BIG with Rowan. So big. It didn't help that he took an extra two weeks to check out. The ability to further the human race by forgetting practically everything has certainly taken effect here except in that category. I remember how miserable, whiny, cranky and crazy I was those two weeks past my due date. Nobody liked that girl. Let's do me a solid here little one and come relatively close to on time.
On the left is me at 30 weeks with Rowan and the right is me at 27 weeks with Lyra.
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I have to pee all the time. At night, I visit that porcelain throne at least three times. I am slowly convincing Sel to let me get a chamber pot. It would be the best gift he's ever given me. Nothing says love like "Here baby! Now you don't have to walk those miserable ten feet to the bathroom all night long"
Sel and Rowan got to come with me to my last ultrasound. It was amazing! Did you know they have something called 4D now? Yeah. It's a live action shot of your baby. A little Morgan Freeman appears at the bottom of the screen and narrates everything that your baby is doing. "As you can see here, the magnificent daughter you are carrying is gently swallowing amniotic fluid."
She was really active during it and Rowan melted my heart for the first half of it. As soon as she popped her cute face up on the screen, he started waving and saying "HI!" He is so excited for baby sister to get here. He always wants to kiss my belly and say hey to his favorite gal. I'm so glad he is already forming a connection with this little one. Hopefully it will mean he won't attack her with our plethora of Nerf weaponry while she's a helpless newborn.
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| He loves to take "Baby Sister" doll and help her do things. |
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| While I know he's pumped to get a lil sis, he would love if I could provide a big sister (or brother) instead. He adores this one here. |
She seems shy to me. I don't know if that's real or not. I remember when Row captured my heart during his ultrasound by sucking his little lips in 3D. Hers was different than I expected. I fell in love with the picture of her covering her face with her hands. I don't know how to explain it, but the idea that she didn't want us to look at her made me want to hug her. She also tends to only move around when it's quiet and I'm alone. Every time she starts kicking and I have Sel touch my belly, she stops. I can't wait to see what she looks like and what her personality is like. This game doesn't seem like it will ever get old!
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| At first, I thought Row and Lyra look so different. Now I go back and forth. There are for sure some big similarities and differences. |
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| This is my love her forever picture. She's just so tender! |
I had a two week stretch where I bawled my eyes out if it looked like I wasn't going to get a nap. Thankfully I haven't felt that way everyday, but it is already making me super nervous for how I will cope with a newborn and toddler sleep schedule. I am fairly certain it will be a daily battle to not fall apart. No sleep is a pretty magnificent form of torture. I did feel an amazing blessing happen this last Sunday. Rowan is cutting some teeth which means he wakes up crying every 2-2.5 hours. We had just gotten to the point of sleeping completely through the night! (Cause that boy is officially weaned as of his 19-month birthday! Can I get a holla!! I'm so glad it happened naturally for the most part. I sometimes miss it when I know it would be such an easy comfort to him while teething or when he's really sad, but we are slowly figuring out other ways to calm him down) He woke up at 5am and was not going back to sleep for anything. I felt like crying I was so tired but said a little prayer that I would have patience and compassion for my poor little guy. A true miracle happened later while he was throwing a MASSIVE tantrum. I was calm! It was such a huge answer to my prayer. I keep turning back to that when I start to dread the upcoming stretch of never sleeping again for a year. I'll get the help I need to survive. So many prayers were answered by others those first few weeks/months.
What else? My pants still fall off my butt every five seconds. I don't understand how my bum is turning into a pancake while my hips are expanding at an alarming rate. I got the King bum (which means you have no derriere at all) but I swear it's never been this pathetically flat. Just when behinds are all the rage, mine is waving a quick goodbye. My sadness is much more for the loss of pants though. A few times I've been walking around in public with my pants mid-thigh. I can't get them to stay on because a belt is out of the question and I can't get tighter maternity pants because they would still smoosh my belly. My dream of joining a nudist colony is soon to be fulfilled.
Special thanks to my pro photographer for making me look super fly.
