Barrel Rolls
Well little baby Peach is doing cartwheels and barrel-rolls in Mom-to-Be’s belly today. Yesterday Peach was very still and quiet, barely moving at all. Today the little critter is rolling and poking away at Ms. Pregnant’s belly. The “kicks” are now more like shrugs and squirming than the pokes and punches of a few weeks ago. Peach is probably finding it too crowded to wind up and throw a punch now.
Mom-to-Be is doing fine, despite the strange belly sensations. Now well into week 30, she definitely has that “I’ve swallowed a beach ball” profile.
Some of the nice things that I’ve noticed as she’s now in the third trimester:
- nausea completely gone
- sensitivity to smells back to normal
- no more gagging
- hunger back to reasonable levels (in fact she doesn’t seem hungry much but is still eating regularly)
Her reflux gastritis is quite bad, but now that she’s taking her prescription antacid it’s gone away. Only when she forgets does it come back with a vengeance. I wonder what our mothers and grandmothers did to cope before these antacids were around?
However as her pregnancy advances, I’ve noticed the following:
- harder for her to bend over and pull on her shoes/tie up the laces
- harder to do up her own coat – the zipper is really tight!
- deeper and louder breathing at night
- sleeping less deeply and more fitfully
The sleeping is the most noticable because I’m affected by it. She’s now past the 200 lb mark which means whenever she rolls over or repositions in bed, it’s like a major earthquake has hit. No longer those little tremors before – these are full-on bouncing waves that wake me up. She’s also unable to sleep on her belly any more because the Becoming-A-Baby kicks and pokes her when she does – I guess Peach is getting squished and doesn’t like that much.
And I’ve also been woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of her breathing. Now that she’s supporting a much larger critter inside, she often will have periods at night where it sounds like she’s just run a marathon. Not sure why it only happens once in a while but it only seems to happen at certain times in the night.
Side note: she told me that at work one of her colleagues who just left on maternity leave had a noticeably larger nose by the time she left. Another little thing that no one tells you about pregnancy – that your nose may enlarge to allow better airflow! Yeesh.
It’s now getting painfully obvious that something’s coming… so we’re planning on getting a crib and setting up the baby room soon. Might as well be prepared as anything can happen now.
