You know when you get married, or rather, right before you get married, everyone tells you the first year will be the hardest? Similarly with the first trimester. Everyone's chock-full of horror stories about the nausea and the exhaustion and the hormones and...
I'm going to be the voice for the exceptions, and tell you that in my case, the first year of marriage was an absolute honeymoon-period-daze of awesomeness. The second year, that's when the gloves came off. Similarly, my first trimester was fiiiine. Which made the second trimester all the more surprising. Everyone assured me it would be all energy bursts and unicorn kisses. Yeah, right.
In the first half of this trimester, there was a doomsday-ish fear. In the first trimester, as long as I was still falling asleep by 9pm, I knew something else probably controlled my body. In the second, I was back to my usual self, my stomach was flat (well, flattish, let's be honest), and there was no sign of life from within. How do you know there's still a baby in there?? Answer: you don't, until the nerve wracking 20-week TIFFA scan when each of the baby's organs are measured for any problems. Longest 6 weeks of my life, especially as we'd just started telling people about the baby, and I kept worrying we'd jinx it.
I divide the second trimester into BT & AT - Before TIFFA & After TIFFA. The former period was Dazed Denial. The latter was Crazy Town. I recently found myself Googling 'divorces in the second trimester,' amongst other things. Not because I wanted one, but because I was convinced my husband would. I tear up even more than usual. And eeeeverything's grounds for a fight! Nor is it only me that's emotional. A's equally stressed about the baby, especially since he can't feel it kicking away. So he's just as quick to snap. And have I mentioned that we shifted countries and changed careers and are still setting up a new home? Both of us are in the right, and in the wrong, with pretty much anything we're ranting about. The whole Oprah act of dissecting the argument empathetically so we can forgive each other gets super emotionally draining super fast. And frankly, we just don't have the time for it. So it's a good thing we're chilled out people who like each other very much.
I can't begin to imagine the pressure on a relationship that hasn't had the time to form solid roots. Not to mention a relationship with other people thrown in, like in-laws, or other relatives. I've been watching my pregnancy forums & boards, and I've noticed more break-up stories, complaints, and hormonal attacks than ever before. So yes, the second trimester may not have you physically puking, but emotionally, it's a whole other story, at least for a couple of weeks. Which isn't to say that it doesn't have its moments. The baby kicking is all kinds of awesome. And if you experienced nausea etc in the first trimester, I'm told it finally lets up now, much to everyone's joy. But for me, following on the heels of an uneventful first trimester, the second one was a slap that proved I wasn't completely immune to hormonal changes.
The good news is that it ends. Moving into our third trimester, we're starting to invest our energy in the practical stuff. Over the last two weeks, A & I took four prenatal classes together. We find the same things helpful and outrageous (one doctor actually said, "They deliver breech babies naturally in the West because they don't care if the baby dies there. You couldn't pay me to deliver my baby in the US!"). We both acknowledge that despite this baby being very much planned and even more wanted, we'd really like some more time together, just the two of us. But we also know that that's what we'll always want. We're talking to each other, and, more importantly, listening to each other again. I think it's safe to say the second trimester suckiness has passed. I'm excited to see what the third brings!
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