I’ve said before that I really want to try to enjoy this pregnancy more than I did my first, so I thought it would be nice to keep a pregnancy diary. So now it’s all out in the open it’s time to get going with that!

 

Hello second trimester! The time when you’re supposed to feel full of energy and just glowing, right? Well, sadly not for me - I’m still exhausted! But on the plus side, (and it’s a huge huge plus) the all day nausea (I refuse to call it morning sickness) has stopped and, aside from still being sick twice a day, I’m starting to feel much better. I’m so relieved, because with my first pregnancy, the nausea was constant until 20 weeks and I was still being sick at 30 weeks, so this is a definite improvement on that. I’ve also got a bit of appetite back and the very thought of food isn’t turning my stomach.

This definitely does feel a very different pregnancy to my first in so many ways. With Max, I worried constantly, the whole way through, but the benefit of having a toddler to look after is that there’s no time to worry! I think pregnancy also felt so long last time, partly due to the never-ending sickness, but having a toddler to run around after definitely makes the time fly. But I’m definitely feeling the exhaustion - Max is going through a phase of waking in the night, and I’m struggling to sleep too. So I’ve finally taken advantage of that very annoying saying that gets uttered to mums of newborns everywhere, “sleep when the baby sleeps”. We’ve been taking a nap together in my bed, and it’s just lovely to snuggle up together and have a bit of a snooze.

 

The Baby’s Development

I love reading all about what stage of development the baby is at, and what changes are happening each week. This week the baby is about the length of half a banana, and is growing hair and eyebrows! They can suck their thumb, and are starting to make facial expressions like frowning and squinting.

 

Symptoms

Symptoms-wise it’s a very different pregnancy too. With Max, my eczema completely cleared up, and I had lovely shiny hair that I only had to wash once a week to keep it looking lovely. It’s a shame I was being sick so much that I never went anywhere to show off my lovely skin and hair! This time around my eczema has flared up, my skin is really itchy and dry, and my hair is really greasy. Eczema and asthma do seem to be strange ones around pregnancy - my asthma has flared up again this time around, just as it did the first time.

 

The bump is here!

I’m so much bigger than I was last time at this stage! It’s like my body has just gone ‘oh right, pregnant? I remember how to do that!’ I think my tummy is probably the same size at 14 weeks as it was at 20 weeks last time, so I dread to think how big I’ll be by the end. I’ve already embraced the maternity jeans and am looking forward to buying some new maternity clothes.