It’s about time I tell you about the second trimester of pregnancy. I’d planned on writing this before Christmas but as I have a never-ending list of blog posts I just didn’t get ’round to it.
The second trimester is from week 13 to week 28. Those weeks seriously flew by and I’ve just hit week 35. No, I can’t quite believe it either.
In my first trimester blog post I shared a breakdown of the 3 trimesters. I also talked trough an overview of those first 3 months, the symptoms I experienced and more. You can go back and read that or find it in my full pregnancy journey archive.
Second Trimester Overview
As with my first trimester I was very lucky. I went about life without much change. I continued working, visiting Cornwall and lots of train journeys back and forth from Cambridge.
I had my 20 week scan and everything was confirmed to be healthy. In the run up to this it’s like you’re holding your breath and waiting for that confirmation that everything is going smoothly.
My diet is generally pretty good but I did find that I had some food aversions around month 6. Nothing major but anything with too much flavour was really off-putting to me. This meant I ended up eating a lot of beige food, well, let me get specific – Marmite on crumpets were my go-to meal. I was still all about the fruit throughout this time, particularly of the citrus variety.
I finally felt comfortable early in December to start thinking about what we’ll need for the baby. I didn’t take it too seriously, actually I’ve only just started ordering the things we want. However, my mum and I did visit the Stokke shop in Westfield London. We got so much helpful information and it really does make a difference to go in-store and chat with the staff.
Towards the end of the 3 months I become very very low on energy, more so than in my first trimester. As I mentioned before, I hadn’t been eating as well as I normally do and ended up being handed multiple packs of iron tablets towards the end of the trimester. I started to take them the next day along with a refresh to my diet (lots of green veg smoothies) and my energy levels shot up.
Let’s take a closer look at symptoms, emotions and cravings
Headaches:
I still had the odd headache up ’til 5 month but I’m putting that down to my caffeine intake. By starting the day with a cup of coffee or tea I was able to avoid those headaches.
Food:
Towards the end of month 6 I went off strong flavours. I even went off my all-time favourite food, spinach and chickpea curry. I used to get a lot of iron from my homemade curries and strews so this was a real knock to my diet. I found ways to get around it but I didn’t do the best job of adapting my diet at first. I mostly got through a lot of crumpets and jars of Marmite during the third trimester.
Iron:
My energy came back at the start of month 4 but went shockingly low towards the end of month 6. That’s when I had a full blood count taken and my iron levels had gone from being really good to dropping very low. This correlated with my poor change in diet.
I was advised to take 3 iron tablets a day. At first I was worried that these would be those big old horse tablets, luckily they’re tiny. Unluckily, they’re super strong and can make you feel awful. With a combination of iron tablets and a positive change in my diet I seem to be back on track.
Smell:
My sense of smell continued to be really sensitive. I couldn’t go near the bin and became obsessed with smelling the freshly washed laundry.
Emotions:
My emotions were pretty good throughout those 3 months. I’d heard a lot about pregnancy bringing on mood swings but I’m yet to experience that.
Exercise:
I didn’t go to the gym or find a suitable pilates class so I focused on walking as much as possible and doing workouts at homes. I also found swimming to be really enjoyable and have already got some good use out of my comfortable maternity costume – very pleased about this because it wasn’t cheap.
Nesting:
The nesting feeling has been strong right from the start. It helps that we moved into a new home this time last year although I’ve been desperate to cut down on the amount of stuff we own.
Dreams:
Dreams have been an interesting one throughout pregnancy. I had no idea that they’d be so vivid, I’d never heard anyone mention it before. Some have been awful and others were just really unusual. Either way, they’re only dreams. I did write a brief post about pregnancy dreams a couple of months back.
Hair:
My hair grew so quickly and I’m very happy about that. However, what I don’t love is that my fringe totally grew out over the festive season and I couldn’t book in anywhere to get it sorted. I’m hoping to get a cut this coming week.
Nails:
My nails have been very strong and growing much quicker than normal. I managed to ruin that with getting shellac done just before Christmas. I’m now going without polish ’til after the birth.
Skin:
My skin has been SO GOOD over the last few months. I’m using my favourite Clarins Hydra-Essential face cream in the morning and evening along with the fantastic Clarins Body Treatment Oil across my bump and the rest of my body. I’ll probably do a full post on my skincare routine throughout pregnancy.