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the second trimester

A collection of passages from various journal entries during the second trimester.

3 months

  • “Sometimes the fear still creeps in. I sill see myself having to tell everyone we lost the baby, but then I push those thoughts away.”
  • “Yesterday was good, I was able to eat a few things, and cooking has been happening a little more at home. I started to get anxious and worried in the evening when I continued to feel good. I tried to push the thoughts away but it was hard work. We went to the midwife appointment and heard it, for the first time. The baby’s little heart beat. Strong and fast. It was unreal. We were quiet, we just listened, I didn’t want it to end.”

 

4 months

  • “Honestly I don’t know how we got here, but then I do, one day at a time. There is an avocado sized baby inside me, it blows my mind. No one can tell because all the vomiting has kept my stomach flatter than ever before. But we heard the heartbeat, they are really in there!”
  • “I turn 28 soon. It feels crazy to me because I’ve generally disliked my birthdays and the idea of getting a year older, but being so close to 30 I figured i’d be having some mental breakdown haha. Suddenly though, my view has changed. I’ve been able to enjoy all these years in my 20s to the max. I have moved ahead in my career and have spent so much quality time with my husband. We’ve enjoyed all these years of it being just us and Congo and it has been amazing. We’ve done crazy things and seen the world. None of this has to change of course, and heck, there’s still TWO long full years ahead in my 20s, but my 30s now look so exciting.”
  • “I am full of gratefulness for all of the wonderful things in my life. I am grateful to be pregnant in this moment, for not wanting for anything but the healthy baby boy or girl to come join us in this life. I am overjoyed in happiness daily. I thank God, above all.”
  • “I am grateful for this moment in our lives, for the life growing inside me.”
  • “I am hopeful that those that continue to hope and pray for a child will be blessed with one.”
  • “Fear will not allow me to do what I know I am able to do, so I refuse it and prohibit it from coming anywhere near my pregnancy and birth.”

 

5 months

  • “I am starting to fall in love with this tiny belly of mine. It’s taking a little bit of shape, but overall it’s small and still most people at work don’t know. But it’s the way my body is shaped, it’s the way it’s growing this little baby and honestly as long as they are healthy there is no need to worry about whether my belly is round or flat at this moment.”
  • “I think I felt the baby move, but I can’t be sure, it’s not like I know what that would feel like… I had just eaten so I wasn’t sure if it had just been my stomach processing food but it felt like a rolling motion. We’ll have to wait and see!”
  • “We started setting up the nursery! Moved the home office to a different room and things are taking shape!”

 

6 months

  • “This little guy has been so active lately! The feeling is surreal and amazing. Feeling him move catches me by surprise and instantly makes me smile.”
  • “I have been feeling so good now! I’m still in my regular jeans and regular clothes, but I can see the roundness will be coming soon!”
  • “I haven’t thrown up in a few days so that’s been incredible. I haven’t had the energy to work out throughout this pregnancy, mostly the vomiting and lack of food has kept me from it, but I can see I have the energy now, so I’m excited to make that happen in the near future.”
  • “Finally picked up all the big items we needed, like a stroller, crib, car seat etc and we’re waiting for them to be delivered. It’s feeling so real!”

 

“My darling baby boy, we lost your brother or sister one month before you showed up. Reading back the entries of my journal I realize how fragile you are, and have been this whole time. You too were the size of an orange seed once… and it’s wild to think you’re as big as a bunch of kale now. You’re huge little one! Your kicks made my tummy move last night for the first time and I sat there, staring at the little bumps you made in awe of your strength. You are amazing, strong and so incredibly loved. The entries of my journal count back all the days with you, and I smile at the relief and celebration of making it another day together. Look how far we’ve come my love, one day at a time has led us here, to week 27, the last week of this wild and incredible second trimester. 91 days to go, already on the double digits and I’m ready to meet you. Yes, our lives will change more than we know but I’m ready for it all.

Love you always,

Mom.”

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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the first miscarriage

We got pregnant after one try, it was kind of crazy that way. We were a family of four counting Congo for 10 weeks before the bleeding started one morning, it was faint, barely there, but fear set in and burrowed a home in my stomach. We called the midwife and she said to monitor it, but not to be alarmed, bleeding could happen in a healthy pregnancy. I don’t know the order of events, it feels like a terrible dream. My mind was a blur of thoughts, how could I focus when my body was potentially failing me? When the bleeding got heavier and the blood tests confirmed the HCG hormone had risen but not by the amount it should have, my heart knew. I was losing my first baby. He was leaving me and there was nothing I could do about it. We had already shared 11 weeks together, there was this special bond we had created. Christian kissed my belly every morning and I talked to this little baby every day on my way to work. I loved him deeply and my due date was already in my calendar. My baby, my very first baby. I remember crying for hours in bed one morning. The bleeding was so heavy, the pain in my abdomen was settling in, making it all the more real for me. Christian cried with me but also urged us to go to the hospital. I didn’t want to, I knew what they would say, it would be too final, it would make it all real. But I was weak and nothing made sense to me, so I agreed. We rode with red faces and upon getting a room they asked me to put on a hospital gown. I wore it with one of Christian’s sweaters over top. It was bright yellow. We waited there and he held my hand. I remember being numb. Tears somehow kept forming in my eyes, and the thoughts we a mixture of faint Whys and Maybe it’s all ok. When they gave us the news that the baby was no longer inside of me my world fell apart. There could be no deeper pain, no stronger raw world shaking pain that could exist. A knife dug in deep into my chest, the lack of air in my lungs suffocated me, nothing could make this moment less painful and there was nothing I could do to change it. He was gone, my baby boy was gone. We never knew his gender, but a part of me always thought of him as a he, so a he he stayed.

The feelings of losing someone set in like they do. One after the other..

SHOCK & DENIAL

There was a numbness, that came the days after, only Christian and anyone who has gone through something similar can understand. I felt hollow, like the best part of me had been viciously ripped out. An empty shell with nothing left inside of me. Like a black hole lay where my baby used to be. It felt surreal, this wasn’t supposed to be a part of our story. This wasn’t how life is supposed to go, you get pregnant, you give birth, you live life with a baby, the baby breathes… everything was all wrong. Someone had messed up the order of life’s events, he was too little.

PAIN & GUILT

The knife sat lodged in my chest. It was constantly hard to breathe. The world felt like a scary place and I had lost all sense of control. Control, this illusion of something I had. Guilt took place over pain quickly. I needed someone to blame, and who better than me? It was my job wasn’t it? My job to bring this baby into the world, and I couldn’t do it. I failed at this one task and now he was gone. The guilt weighed heavy over me, hurting me daily. Just the word itself is hurtful. MISCARRIAGE, defined as an unsuccessful outcome of something planned – “the miscarriage of the project”. Words have power and although I tried not to dig into it too much, it just pointed to me. I failed in carrying this baby, and that was hard to swallow.

ANGER & BARGAINING

I am the woman. I was the one carrying this child of ours. How could my body fail me like this? Why did this happen to me? What terrible thing have I done to deserve this pain, to deserve this tragedy? Up to that point in my life I was at the healthiest I had ever been. I stayed away from alcohol for months before we even started trying, I ate regularly and healthy meals, I worked out almost every day. I was strong, I was ready. I did all the right things, I took all the right steps. HOW could this happen to ME? I saw a pregnant woman outside the mall, she was smoking. Why me? I saw a woman who was obese ignore her doctor’s recommendations and continue to consume large quantities of soft drinks and junk food carry her baby happily into the world. Why did I even try then? I saw pregnant women everywhere and wondered how I was different, what mistake I had made. It was unhealthy to think this way and I only know this now, but at the time, I felt angry with my body, with other pregnant women and with the world.

DEPRESSION, REFLECTION, LONELINESS

I became upset and sad that I had spent so much effort getting super healthy, to have my body be in the best shape for welcoming new life and seeing that at the end of the day it didn’t matter. I gained weight really fast, I ate pizza every other day because Why did it matter anyways… It was hard to talk about it as much as I wanted to, none of my closest friends could ever understand this loss, nor did I ever want them to have to understand. Mother’s day came around just over a month after our loss. By then the world had forgotten. It was one of the hardest days for me. I was supposed to be pregnant, celebrating the journey to motherhood on this special day. All I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and wait for tomorrow, but family expectations meant we had to not only celebrate our moms, rightly so, they should be celebrated, but also plan the whole thing. I felt like it was the world’s cruel way of hurting me, plan a party for a dozen people to celebrate a day that was going to be yours too. My heart was so heavy and my sadness was so grand. This day, a reminder of what I was on the journey to becoming, or was I already a mother? I felt like a mother who had lost her child too early, a mother with a baby that didn’t get a chance to live in this world outside of my body, but a mother all the same, yet the world didn’t see me that way. Only Christian saw me as a Mother, and in the mail when I checked it that morning, I received a letter from my angel baby that Christian had written. It was the most touching, and the best mother’s day gift I could have received that day. The action will forever live in my heart. I braved the day. I put on a good face. I smiled and I laughed. I planned an obstacle course for all of us to warm up because the day turned out to be super cold and we were outside. Eventually we packed up and went home. I think Christian and I ate pizza for dinner and just watched Netflix for the rest of the night. He held me close and I cried every now and then, but the day was over and tomorrow should be a little less painful.

THE UPWARD TURN

Work became interesting in the coming months, and enough changes were happening at work to create a distraction from the pain. We found opportunities knocking at our doors and incredible things happening in our careers. Both Christian and I took it as signs that this is where our attention needed to be. We had not wanted to try again for a baby. We decided maybe we could take some time to focus on our jobs. We had come out of the fog and the routine of our life was starting to make its way back into our life. The pizza delivery guy was not called any more, healthy food started to be made again in our kitchen, and life continued as it had. The workouts resumed soon after and we spent time on us.

RECONSTRUCTION & WORKING THROUGH

Christian and I have this incredible bond and connection I could gush about all day. But we communicate, sometimes more than he’d like, haha, and we work through every little thing. Communication is number one for us. Only by doing it together were we able to come to terms with what had happened. We mourned our lost child but we built a stronger unit. We knew we could get through anything having just been to hell and back while holding hands the entire time. We worked through our emotions and we worked on ourselves. I realized my goal had been to be a mother for so long that it had become the reason I did many of the things I did. Fitness had been a part of my life for years but when I started to break down why I had gained all this weight and lost control I realized I had been doing it all for the wrong reasons. I wanted to be healthy, for the baby that would come in our future. I wanted to be fit and strong, for the baby and the pregnancy that would come in the future… The thing was, when this pregnancy and baby came, and then left. I lost my purpose, I lost my reasons, I lost my why. I changed trajectory during this time. I decided to be healthy for ME. I decided to be fit and strong for ME, and this is likely one of the things that allowed me to stay stronger when we lost our second baby last October.

ACCEPTANCE & HOPE

As time passed we grew to accept that this was our story, and this was how life was supposed to go for us. There were many lessons learned through this unfortunate and terrible event. We grew to be stronger, time heals, this I have learned. We don’t live with what ifs, they do more harm than good. We live in love and in hope. We hoped when we decided to try again, sometime in the future that it would be our time, and although we lost that baby too and it took a third try, we are beyond grateful for every experience that has led us to be pregnant with this baby boy today. We love him so much already and we are anxiously, terribly and impatiently waiting to meet him but we live in love and in hope. And every day is a wonder and a blessing, and every moment with him kicking inside me makes my heart skip a beat.

Why share all this?

I know this is incredibly personal, and I know many would choose not to share these words, but I have been continually surprised and delighted to receive private messages from women who have experienced something similar. Women who share in this story in some way and who felt alone and isolated in their pain before they connected with someone who understood them. So I share this for you, the silent reader who I may not hear from, and those that do reach out and share their stories with me. My hope has always been to share in hopes that someone else might connect to the words on the screen and feel even just a little bit less alone.

Love,

Mariangelica

 

Photo by Dmitry Bayer on Unsplash

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The sun was shining yesterday! Enough that you could actually feel the warmth on your skin. It’s exciting, the sun finally warming something up again. The snow melting its way into puddles and small mounds on street corners. It’s like change is coming, and every day is different from the last.

It’s slowly hitting me how quickly time is passing. Maybe it’s my daily changing body, maybe it’s the fact that i’m no longer throwing up every day so days are starting to blend together. Maybe it’s the weather and the snow and the fact my thermostat is getting closer to matching the temperature outside. Whatever the case, I’m 5 months pregnant.

5 months.

That’s more than I’ve ever been pregnant before. It’s a miracle, truly. Every morning I see my reflection in the mirror and I’m growing more in love with my changing silhouette by the day. It’s looking rounder, different, and I’ve never felt this way so consistently, day after day. Everyday I am in awe of what my body is doing. How it’s taking a little being and turning them into a tiny human who now is as long as a banana.

We have our ultrasound this morning and i’m excited, and for the first time going into the ultrasound room, not scared. I know the little baby is in there and not just because I threw up three times in the office bathroom yesterday after trying to eat a pear, followed by a banana smoothie. I know they’re in there because I feel them there. I know they are curled up all comfy in their favourite spot, and it could have been nothing, or it could have been everything but i felt something move inside me. It caught me so off guard I couldn’t tell you I was sure it was the baby, but it was strong and it was like nothing else I’ve felt before. It made me eager for when their little feet and hands more consistently drum against my insides. I’m told I’m not going to love those kicks at night when I’m trying to sleep, or when they become strong enough to disrupt an activity, but I can’t see that happening. Similarly to how they told me I would hate morning sickness and it grew to be my good friend and anxiety protector. I’m ready to cherish all of it, and I’m eager for this next stage I’m about to enter as the countdown begins until we meet our beautiful little one.

There’s a lot I want to do, and there’s a lot I want to not do. For now, I’m trying to do more of the things I want to and removing myself as often as possible from situations I don’t want to be a part of! Time is your lifelong companion, and how you use it and value it eventually shapes you. So I’m conscious, and aware of this, but then at the same time sometimes I just say ah screw it and lay down on the couch with Netflix at my fingertips.

Balance y’all.

My word is balance.

 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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NEW MOM MONDAYS CHASING LITTLES
This post is part of the New Mom Monday series! A series about moms and their advice to new moms! Books and videos can only teach us so much, but there’s something special about hearing from real life moms. Honest, true, and always beautifully inspiring!!
♥ What’s your Name?

Britney Mills

♥ Tell us a little about yourself!
I am the mom to 4 children, wife to Max. I love to write and chocolate chip cookies are my jam. Laundry is the most neglected thing in my home until we’re out of things and then it’s an all-day marathon. I love to travel and can’t wait to do more again. I love to play volleyball and softball and try out new things. I love to try new foods and places and I love spending time with my family, whether we’re curled up watching a movie or outside running around.
♥ How many kids do you have? What are their names and ages?
We have 4 kiddos: C is 3, G & D (boys) & M (girl) are 8-month old triplets.
♥ How do you find your “me time”?
Nap time and bed time for sure. Max helps out a lot when he gets home and I can run a quick errand but 5-8 pm is chaos so I usually try to get out after they’re asleep.
♥ What is the best baby related book you’ve ever read?
I haven’t really read books for babies, mostly websites and advice I get in Mommy Facebook groups.
♥ What’s the most useful baby product you have? Why do you love it?

The Nose Frida. I was a little weirded out by it when I first saw my SIL use one because it’s a long tube that helps you suck out the boogers but with triplets, it’s a must have! I gets things out so much better than the blue bulb suckers and it’s pretty inexpensive.

♥ If you could say something to yourself when you first brought home your first baby, what would you say?
With our first I was like, “I’ve got this!” and there were only a few bumps along the way. Bringing home the triplets was a little overwhelming and I would probably tell myself that each phase only lasts a little while. It’s not forever, thank goodness because this girl needs sleep. They are sleeping through the night for the most part now which helps me avoid zombieland.
♥ How much planning did you do before your baby was born, and how do you think that it helped or didn’t help?
I didn’t do a lot with my first, just had baby showers. That probably sounds bad because I didn’t know any better, I guess. With the three, I checked out what all the moms of multiples recommended and it made a huge difference to be prepared for when they came home, since it takes more time to load them all up and go to the store.
♥ What do you believe are the top three pieces of advice a new mom or someone trying to conceive should know?
Don’t put your life on hold because you don’t know when you’ll get pregnant. I struggle with infertility and it’s better to make plans, go on trips and push yourself to reach goals than to mope about not being pregnant. It will happen one way or another and you can use that time to better yourself and be closer to your spouse.
♥ What is your best memory so far of being a mom?

C playing with the babies. He’s so good at talking to them and helping them when I can’t get to them right off (usually when the others are in my arms). I was worried he would have trouble adjusting from all the attention but we make sure to take him out and do stuff with him alone.

♥ Give us the short form version of your birth story.
With C, I went 41 weeks and had to have an emergency c-section because he was 9 lbs! With the triplets, we had to go to a hospital a bit farther away from our home because of the NICU to take care of the babies. I was sent there five days before the triplets were born because my water ruptured. I had to go through steroid shots to help their lungs and on Friday I finally started contracting on my own. They wheeled me into the operating room, gave me a spinal block and then the doctor started. I couldn’t see the babies and they were taken directly to the NICU nurses to assess but Max would tell me they were okay as I waited. He took pictures of them so I could see them because I was taken back to the room to wait an hour or two until they wheeled me into the NICU. They had all three in their own little isolettes, or enclosed cribs, and we had to wait a month before they could come home.
♥ Lastly, for fun, define motherhood!

The craziest, most exhausting and funny rollercoaster I’ve ever been on. You’re tugged in so many directions but somehow you make it through and I love it!

To hear more from Britney be sure to visit her blog Marriage & Family Strong and follow her on Facebook.

If you would like to participate in New Mom Mondays please feel free to message me by using my contact form! I would love to not only feature you on my blog but learn from your answers, as I’m sure many readers would too! 
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NEW MOM MONDAYS CHASING LITTLES
This post is part of the New Mom Monday series! A series about moms and their advice to new moms! Books and videos can only teach us so much, but there’s something special about hearing from real life moms. Honest, true, and always beautifully inspiring!!
♥ What’s your Name?

Pragati Siddhanti

♥ Tell us a little about yourself!
I am Pragati—am the co-founder and partner at Be For Beauty. Earlier in 2016, I relocated to the picturesque city of Basel, Switzerland with my 6-year-old daughter and a workaholic husband. After giving up my 6 figure salary and role as an IT manager in India, I decided it was time to take a leap of faith and dedicate this time to grow and hone both our babies, Niyati and Be For Beauty.
♥ How many kids do you have? What are their names and ages?
I have one daughter who is 6 years old. Her name is Niyati
♥ How do you find your “me time”?
While this is something I really struggle with especially after I moved from India to Switzerland but I still manage to squeeze in a lot of “me” time as I always plan my days, weeks and months in advance. I use a calendar to track all my appointments, I make sure I have laundry days marked and I have all the different bags (gym, ballet, school etc.) ready and packed in advance. I seriously plan my meals along with my outings. Even if it’s an hour in the gym, my “me-time” is extremely important to me, and frankly, that’s what keeps me sane.
♥ What is the best baby related book you’ve ever read?
I have read a lot of story books to my child even when she hadn’t started speaking, however, I am not a big fan of parenting books. I do read up blogs, and advice by fellow mamma’s through a number of FB groups I subscribe to.
♥ What’s the most useful baby product you have? Why do you love it?

When she was a little baby, I swore by the bottle steriliser that I had bought from mother care and the swaddle that I used to carry her in while putting her to sleep. It really worked like a charm for us. But now, nothing really, I would really like alternates to netflix and the tablet.

♥ If you could say something to yourself when you first brought home your first baby, what would you say?
I was really unprepared when I brought her home from the hospital. If I could say something to myself, I would say, “Wish you’d have read up more about how to raise a baby vs how your pregnancy is going to be.” In other words, I would have really loved if I had been more prepared for this sea change that happened to me. I was overwhelmed and I went through serious postpartum depression.
♥ How much planning did you do before your baby was born, and how do you think that it helped or didn’t help?
Like I said in my previous answer, I wasn’t prepared and that hurt me quite a bit. I had to rush to the baby stores time and again as the things I had were never enough and I had a very reactive approach to a new born child. I would have loved being more confident and proactive with her. This is when I had learned the importance of planning ahead. (Not at my corporate job, after all this was the most important project I was ever going to manage ;))
♥ What do you believe are the top three pieces of advice a new mom or someone trying to conceive should know?
1. Plan a child, be ready – emotionally, mentally and physically. It’s not easy dealing with unplanned and accidental pregnancies.
2. Whether you go to those fancy birthing classes or not, make sure you have a lactation specialist by your side. That is more important. Giving birth is an organic and natural process, a woman is sub-consciously trained to do a good job at it – I didn’t practice any of the breathing techniques I learned and I sincerely believe that these classes are over rated.
3. Be prepared to welcome a new member in the house – nothing is ever going to be the same. You will never have the luxury of time so use those 9 months of pregnancy very wisely.
♥ What is your best memory so far of being a mom?

I really say this from my heart, every day with a child in your life is a blessing. Every year gets more fascinating than the one that went by. I don’t know how to pick one, every time she tells me that I am the best mom in the whole wide world, I am overjoyed. Not cuz of the oscar that she keeps giving me, cuz I know that all mothers are the best mothers but that she appreciates all the little things that I do and that she reciprocates the love.

♥ Give us the short form version of your birth story.
Giving birth to Niyati has and will be one of the toughest things I have ever done in my life. I still feel that I almost died but then I came back to life because I was a mother and the journey called life was just about to begin. I was past my due date so I was induced, I was obviously anxious as I was late and I was trying all home remedies to go into labour – however nothing was working. The contractions started but the dilation didn’t – hence I was in labour for a good 28 hours. The pain became excruciating during the last hours, the epidural didn’t work as it was put in quite late and I pushed for really long before she arrived. My husband and my sister were right by my side, I really had no love for anyone at this point as I was delirious with pain by the end of it. But when I saw her, she completely took my breath away, I was still being sewed down there when they wrapped her up and got her to me. She was perfect and an absolute miracle!
♥ Lastly, for fun, define motherhood!

Motherhood is not for everyone, motherhood is extremely exhausting and rewarding at the same time. Like a wise woman once said, “Having a child is like having a tattoo on your forehead”.

To hear more from Pragati be sure to visit her blog Be For Beauty and follow her on Instagram.

If you would like to participate in New Mom Mondays please feel free to message me by using my contact form! I would love to not only feature you on my blog but learn from your answers, as I’m sure many readers would too! 
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