Hello! One of the topics I wanted to address in my blog was how to make pregnancy a happier time. This is the second post in this series. You can read my prior post on a happier first trimester by clicking here.
Share Your Excitement
For most women, the second trimester is a great “honeymoon” period in the pregnancy, as more uncomfortable side effects of the first trimester subside and their energy comes back. What I think adds to that feeling too, though, is that you finally feel free to start telling people that you’re expecting! While we of course told our families and close friends early on, we did wait until the second trimester to tell our larger group of friends, our coworkers, and to announce on social media that we were expecting. It made for a pretty wonderful month to continuously tell more people and feel them share our excitement.
I adored the process of creating our social media announcement. I hand lettered the calligraphy on some kraft paper, surrounded it with loose flowers I bought at our local farmers’ market, and added a pair of socks and a Polaroid style copy of our first ulstrasound photograph made by Social Print Studio. If you are interested in creating something similar, I would recommend getting a matte print of the ultrasound photo made like I did. The film they print the strip of ultrasound photos out on is very high gloss and it’s difficult to make that work for a flat lay arrangement like this.
Exercise However You Can
There were, unfortunately, some complications that arose during my second trimester that made my pregnancy more challenging. I’ll be going into this in much more detail on a later post, but for now, what I can say is that I was told to take it very easy and to back off the running schedule I had been sticking to during the first trimester. However, I was still able to walk and do light prenatal yoga. I did start walking our dogs separately rather than together just to get a bit more movement in my day. I’ll be writing a separate post later with some of my favorite prenatal yoga videos available for free on YouTube. It’s pretty amazing to live in an age where you can simply follow along with those specialized workouts at no cost other than watching a brief ad.
Plan Ahead
While telling people about our pregnancy was a joy, it also made the pregnancy feel much more REAL! Real in the sense of hospital bills, maternity leave, paperwork, and a scary amount of products to buy for a teeny tiny person. It was overwhelming at first, but making a plan to address those things made the whole process easier and happier. Thankfully, I was able to take advantage of that extra boost of energy during the second trimester to plan ahead and tackle these looming issues, and would definitely recommend that you do the same if you can. Some topics we tackled during this time that made a huge difference in how we planned included:
- Calling our insurance and human resources departments to ask questions about maternity and paternity leave.
- Asking our insurance a LOT of other questions. We asked about billing for traditional VBAC, C sections, NICU costs, genetic testing, breast pump coverage, and so on.
- Researching childcare options.
- Changing our insurance deductible (This is not always possible, but as our annual renewal fell during the middle of my pregnancy, we were able to change our deductible prior to the birth of our child to the lowest option, which drastically will reduce the cost of the birth).
- Putting together a baby registry.
- Talking to our doctor about payment options for the birth. We are very lucky that our hospital allows us to prepay a certain amount for the birth in anticipation of average expected costs. At this point, we have essentially paid for what it will cost to have a traditional VBAC with no complications. I hope that this is exactly what happens, but, having seen many friends and family members have children recently and go through some scary experiences, I know that complications can arise at any moment. Should that happen, knowing that we have already paid a majority of what we would owe a hospital, regardless of how the birth progresses, will make it much easier to face those challenging circumstances should they arise.
- Put together a reading list. I’ll be covering this more in a later post, but during this time I took book and podcast titles from anyone I knew who had had a child and made a list of literature to absorb. While I simplify a lot of things in my life as much as I can, I’m a “more is more” person when it comes to information.
Maintain What You Can
With so many changes going on with my body, it was very reassuring to be able to keep some things the same. My doctor advised me that after the first trimester it was safe to go back to coloring my hair and I was very eager to make that appointment to refresh my highlights and lowlights. Since then, I’ve gone in regularly every eight weeks to refresh my hair color and trim the ends. I also kept up pedicures and manicures and still put in the same amount of effort into my daily hair and makeup. Finally, I found a few pieces of clothing that worked well during this transitional time, when you’re too big for regular clothes and too small for maternity clothes. I had a lot of luck finding cute tunic style tops at Forever 21 and Target for pretty affordable prices. This self care and investment in my appearance did wonders for my self esteem and made me feel more like an individual and less like a baby incubator.
I’d love to hear from other moms as well! Did you get your energy back in the second trimester? What did you do to make life a little better during this time?
Standards of Simplicity 