The Second Trimester (so Far)

We recently bought the Nuna Pipa Rx infant car seat from the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale (affiliate links), but it's now sold out. 

Oh my, things went rather sideways at work in the past few weeks - some big deadlines ended up being far more difficult than our team expected - so I'm generally quite behind on things I wanted to write for the blog. I'm completely exhausted, but at least I'm taking some vacation time soon, which will hopefully feel rejuvenating! 

This entire year has been fairly nonstop at the office for me. With that plus the added stress of big life events like the pregnancy and those government job interviews, it's all left me with basically no mental energy for anything except watching TV when I get home from work. I haven't really been able to get myself to read for fun most of this year. 

I'm now in my 20th week of pregnancy, partway through the second trimester. Some symptoms are better than in the first trimester, particularly the nausea, and also coffee and tea taste a bit more normal again, yay! But I don't think my energy levels have actually improved that much overall. Most of my symptoms are honestly still pretty similar in intensity to before, especially the acne and disruptions to my digestive system (alas, both things are quite un-fun!). 

For the past 4 weeks or so, I've had my first persistent enough symptom to want to raise it at my next prenatal appointment: My skin gets itchy throughout the day. I'm not usually great about moisturizing regularly with body lotion, but I started to be religious about it and that didn't even help so much. There's no rash or anything, and I don't think it's from dry skin either. Thankfully, this particular symptom is a little better now than it was around week 17. I think this is a fairly common side effect of pregnancy and is generally benign, but it can also be associated with some rare but serious side effects, so I'll still raise it at my next appointment.

I mentioned that I started getting a small but definite baby bump around week 13 (and that I've had enough bloating on and off since week 7 that I personally felt like I generally looked like I had a bump at least half the time, particularly towards the end of the day). But wow, all of a sudden in week 19, my bump really, really popped! 

It's definitely gotten to the point where even strangers can notice, and I grumble internally about how I feel like a beach ball. If the bump looks and feels this large at 19 weeks, I shudder to think about what I'll feel like past, say, 30 or 35 weeks. I definitely have a more difficult time now with the hot and humid NYC summer weather than I did pre-pregnancy, but at least the weather will hopefully cool down somewhat by the time I reach the third trimester...