Now begins the home stretch. It’s a little surreal to be in the third trimester because it suddenly seems very imminent that birth will happen. Obviously it’s got to happen eventually, but it’s suddenly very real and feels kind of like “omg it could happen any time” in your head. At least that’s how I felt.
Oddly enough, transition from second trimester to third happened a lot quicker than first to second. It was like a switch was flipped. I started feeling more tired and achy, a little nausea (the 3rd trimester seemed to mirror the 1st in the fatigue and nausea department, only not as severe – thankfully!), and I felt like my belly grew even faster. I couldn’t get comfortable sitting, standing, or even lying down much at all. This baby loved to be in my ribs making it hard to bend or even breathe.
The early movements from the second trimester, which felt like bubbles, are a lot more distinctive in the third trimester. You can mostly tell exactly what the baby is doing. Summersaults, turning, fidgeting, hiccups, and straight up kicks/punches to the ribs or cervix (those are fun ><) are very pronounced. It’s later in the third trimester when the baby has reached probably a good 6-7 lbs that those movements get lighter because they run out of room. My baby girl would still move, but it just looked like a wave across my belly instead of staccato beats and started feeling fainter, and I could sometimes not even tell if she was moving, which tended to freak me out, especially if I woke up on my back…repeatedly. Just a note that the reason it’s bad to sleep on your back, especially in the third trimester, is because the primary blood supply to the uterus is in the back, so the weight of the baby if you lie on your back can restrict blood flow. However, that doesn’t mean you should panic simply because you woke up on your back sometime in the night. I would go to sleep on my side and wake up on my back all the time, and my daughter turned out perfectly. My baby shower was on July 27th, which put me at about 35 weeks. Two days later I literally felt like I’d grown tremendously. Even the hubby couldn’t deny that I suddenly looked a lot bigger even just overnight. It was weird. As I’ve already delivered by the time I’m writing this, I can look back and think that despite the doctor saying that the sensation of the baby dropping would feel a certain way and be visually noticeable, maybe I’m one of the weirdos that are different and that’s how I presented as having “dropped”. It was after that point that I really waddled and needed help with things like standing and I could no longer reach to put my own shoes on. I started getting antsy about everything. Before the shower I was anxious about getting the nursery put together, and once the shower happened, I had the nursery set up within the week. I started wondering when labor would happen and what the birth would really be like. Fear of going into labor before 36/37 weeks was ever present, but that’s because I can be a paranoid pessimist. It didn’t help that the Braxton Hicks contractions picked up in frequency quite a bit. All of this is normal though. The third trimester is a time when the finishing touches are happening for the baby in the belly still and mom is putting the finishing touches on her life to prepare for baby. Something I think all moms-to-be should keep in mind though is that there is no truly “ready”. There is “as ready as one can be”.