The third trimester began in quite possibly the most horrendous heatwave of the summer. I basically became a hermit because it was too hot for my heavy and tired body to comfortably leave the house! It went fast to begin with, but towards the end I had the standard “this is taking so long, can we just get this baby out now?” feelings. Still, as much as it sometimes felt it was never going to end, it did. Now I can reflect on the good and bad of the last trimester of my final pregnancy.
Our 11th wedding anniversary
I’d been hiding indoors away from the heat, but we wanted to go out and do something to celebrate our anniversary. We decided on the cinema and a cheeky Nando’s…partially due to the fact both places have air con! I quickly wondered if I was making a mistake as I was struggling with the heat even in the air conditioned car on the way there, but when I got out, the heat really hit me. Even just walking from the car park to the cinema felt like more than I could handle! The air con as we entered the cinema was something of a relief – but it still wasn’t cool enough for me.
Apart from being too hot, I quite enjoyed Supergirl, although I don’t think it received very good feedback from critics! Nando’s was too hot for me too. Not really feeling like eating much due to the temperature, I just ordered a salad. I did try to enjoy our anniversary date, but sadly I kind of just couldn’t wait to go home where I could be cooler!
Goodyear Blimp
This might be sad to some, but one of the highlights of my summer was seeing the Goodyear zeppelin several times. We saw it from home, in a massive traffic queue for the Dartford tunnel and we even saw it at the children’s sports day! The only negative of it was that I got called a blimp because of my big tummy. Rude! Good job I found it funny 🙂
My Chemical Romance
After hiding indoors for days because of yet another heatwave, it thankfully cooled down a little bit for the evening we had tickets to see MCR at Wembley Stadium in London. We’d bought standing tickets long before I knew I was pregnant so I was a little nervous about that. Excitingly, this was baby’s first concert! It was very healing to be 15 again for the evening singing along and surrounded by the energy of so many other My Chem fans.
Baby Shower
The start of the summer holidays meant maternity leave began for me. It was a relief as I was beginning to struggle! It also gave me the opportunity to have a baby shower. I didn’t have one with Autumn or Reuben, so I thought I would have one as this is my last baby. We kept things quite small and I had lots of fun planning the party with a fairy theme. We played games and asked people to write down their predictions and wishes for our baby. It was really lovely seeing what people wrote and we were lucky to receive some really beautiful and helpful gifts.
Cornwall
No sooner had we recovered from the baby shower, it was time to start packing to go on holiday! I was really looking forward to getting away from Medway and being by the sea in Cornwall for the first time in years. I was a little apprehensive about how uncomfortable I might be on the car journey at 35 weeks pregnant. However, it was thankfully a smooth journey and nowhere near as bad as I thought. We had an amazing week with my parents and brother exploring some new places and revisiting some familiar ones. We also experienced the solar eclipse while we were down there and the atmosphere on the beach was fantastic. It was wonderful to enjoy some quality time together before our new arrival! It’s safe to say made the most of being around lots of pasties and ice cream. Plus, we had beautiful weather all week and missed out on another week of hellish temperatures back in Kent!
36 Week Scan
Our local NHS Trust offers a 36 week pregnancy scan as routine. I find this very reassuring, particularly as I’m sure that Autumn’s cyst when she was born should perhaps have previously been detected. It was wonderful to see our baby on the screen again. With her being measured as over 5lbs in weight, I estimated she would be about average weight at birth. Phew, not too big!
False Labours
In the last couple of weeks of pregnancy, there were a couple of times I thought I might be going into labour. I felt a bit silly, like I should be sure with it being my third time! However, I had been having a lot of painful practice contractions for several weeks. During the 38th week, I had a lot of cramping and strong practice contractions one evening. We got an early night, wondering if things would ramp up overnight. Yet I woke up the next morning with no pain whatsoever. Then at 39 weeks and 2 days, I had painful contractions that were 7 minutes apart. We got the ball rolling with childcare and things. However, they got increasingly painful over the course of a couple of hours, but no closer together. It stopped for a while, then started up for a bit again. I had a lot of niggles over the next couple of days, but things didn’t escalate anymore in spite of kerb walking and lots of bouncing on my birth ball.
Finally, at 39 weeks and 6 days my waters broke! It was actually labour time – although we wouldn’t meet our baby girl for almost another 12 hours. I’ll be writing about the birth soon, so watch this space!
