Well, friends…I have hit the proverbial wall. Besides nausea in the first trimester and an abundance of contractions, I’ve honestly felt pretty good this whole pregnancy! I’ve said before I attribute feeling good to continuing my workouts and eating well and I definitely feel better than I did with Lily. By the beginning of the third trimester with her, I was swollen constantly, beyond exhausted and feeling aches and pains everywhere. I also hit the “I am huge” phase much sooner with Lily. I really have been trucking along here until this past week. We traveled to Buffalo to visit my family for Christmas and as soon as we got there I just crashed. I haven’t mentioned this yet on the blog, but we moved rental homes in Atlanta (to get out of the place that had mold and water damage) and I had to get us all settled in that house 2 days before we left for Buffalo. To say it was stressful is an understatement but because I didn’t have a choice I just kept moving along. Maybe it was the comfort of being back home or the fact that I had multiple people to keep an eye on my toddler but all I wanted to do was sleep and eat over Christmas week.
I know a lot of toddler moms understand this… when you’re pregnant with your first you get a ton of rest, ask your partner for foot massages and “milk” your pregnancy a lot more. When you’re pregnant with your second (or third or fourth) you don’t have time to rest. You have another human being relying on you to take care of them so even when you’re so exhausted you can barely keep your eyes open if your kid is awake and you’re the only one home you can’t just lay down and nap! Luckily, up until now, it’s been pretty manageable. I think I’ve taken 10 naps this whole pregnancy but for some reason once this week hit it felt like a ton of bricks were added to my back (and my front!). I hate being miserable and complaining about being exhausted but at this point, I’m starting to hear my body tell me it’s time to slow down a little bit. I plan on working out up until my due date but now that football season is over I’ll have a partner to watch Lily when I need to put my feet up later in the day. Luckily Andy is amazing and supportive and is all about helping when I need it but sometimes I am so hard headed I insist on doing everything myself (yeah, remember the whole “perfectionist” thing).
This coming week I have an OB appointment and it MIGHT be time for the GBS swab. Ugh. If you’re a first-time mama you will learn about the GBS test in your third trimester. It’s a small swab sample that they take from your vagina and bum. It’s not painful or invasive but for mommies hoping for a natural birth, it’s terrifying. GBS is a type of bacteria that can be in some women’s digestive tracks. If you’re positive for GBS it won’t do much to you but there is a very very small chance you can pass it to your baby during labor and if that happens it is VERY dangerous for your baby. As in, your baby could die. So, as a preventative measure, women who are positive for GBS are given antibiotics during labor to kill the bacteria and stop it from passing to the baby. As a mama who likes to avoid all meds whenever possible, I am terrified of having antibiotics in labor and I don’t want my child’s life to start off with a messed-up gut because he had to have drugs running through him before he got his first sip of breast milk. Luckily, I was negative with Lily and I’ve been told by some professionals in the birth community to take a ton of probiotics and healthy gut foods before the test to hopefully kill any GBS that may be in my system. I don’t know if it will work but I’m going to try it!
I’ll let you know how it works out. Wish me luck!