The second trimester

“Again?!”

Bed rest is extremely boring. And limiting. I couldn’t even cook. Now I love Dan, he is an amazing person but his cooking leaves something to be desired. In fact for the first 2 weeks of my bed rest every meal I had was beans on toast. Every. Single. Meal. Pre-pregnancy I loved beans on toast but after fifteen straight days of it, I was ready to never eat another plate ever again. Still to this day I can’t even think about it without feeling nauseous. Anyway, my Auntie Emma (my choice in second birthing partner since in Mum lives in Derby) bought me a Greggs sausage roll and a bottle of Orange Fanta everyday for my dinner. My craving. I was completely off all meat except for Greggs sausage rolls. So on the fifteenth day of beans on toast I snapped. Poor Dan had to deal with a hormonal pregnant woman sobbing over her tea. 

“It’s like butterflies mixed with indigestion”

Being on bed rest meant that I couldn’t do much more than shower and go to the toilet. Luckily for me I had a few appointments to keep me from going crazy. I had an insane amount of tests done because of the bleeding. One of those tests came back to show I had BV. It’s similar to thrush but can cause complications. So I had it treated and a few weeks later, I had it again. This became a theme for the rest of my pregnancy. I was over cleaning and using the wrong products but this was never explained to me. One day I was lying on the couch with Dan when I felt like I needed to burp. My stomach rumbled. This happened a few times over the next few days. The feeling gradually getting stronger before I realised that it was the baby moving. Dan tried his hardest but never got to feel it until much later. And whenever anyone tried to feel it the baby would stop. I used to joke around and say ‘gunna be just like me the awkward monkey.’ Now me and Dan had a nickname for the baby, Bumper because my bump was growing quickly. We would imagine our lives with little Bumper in it. Things we would do with the baby, birthdays, christmas’ and Easter’s.

“Now this might be a little bit cold”

From the moment I found out I was pregnant I had pictured the baby as a little girl with Dans eyes. I don’t know why, I just did. Most everyone else thought it was a boy. We were excited for our 20 week scan. To find out if it was going to be a princess or a prince. We decided to take along Dans Mam with us to this scan as it was to her birthday a week later and this was her first Grandchild. We planned to go shopping afterwards to buy either some pink or some blue things. The appointments before us had some delays so we were sat in the waiting room. Now they always ask you to go with a full bladder to these appointments, I was busting and eventually I just had to go. Not 5 minutes after they called my name. We went in and unfortunately they were unable to tell us or finish off their anomaly scan as the little tinker had hidden her bottom half behind my hipbone. They rescheduled us in for a week later. We still went shopping but didn’t buy anything. Just chose some things to come back for once we knew. One week later and we were back. Me, Dan and my Auntie Emma. Emma had come to all our scans and appointments with us. She had had 5 different birth experiences so was a fountain of knowledge. We were called in and the sonographer was doing the usual. Only she was frowning. Then she excused herself. I wasn’t worried, I thought that the baby was up to it’s little tricks again. She came in with a more experienced sonographer who scanned me again. She was also frowning. Now at this point I was getting worried. Something was obviously not right.