Things Are Happening

photo by Mahalie

The first trimester having officially passed us by last Friday, things in the belly region finally feel like they're beginning to change. While my jeans still zip just fine (though they are low-rise), I can feel that my lower abdomen is getting rounder, as well as being a different...texture than it was before. While an expanding waistline in the nonpregnant state is usually associated with an increased squishiness around the middle, my lower belly now has the firm, "bouncy" quality I'm so familiar with from touching hundreds of pregnant bellies in the course of my job. When I lie on my stomach, it sort of feels like I've got a cantaloupe in there. Another sign that my passenger is getting bigger: the baby's heartbeat is much easier to hear with a doppler now than it was even just a week or two ago. And while I've noticed round ligament pain for a couple of weeks when I laugh or sneeze, now it's often there if I change positions quickly or wake up with a really full bladder. However--I've gone from having to urinate almost every hour back down to a much more normal frequency, and my appetite seems to be back in full force (though I'm planning to stay on the B6 and Unisom for at least another week). I do, however, continue to crave long naps and an early bedtime...in more ways than one: while several articles reassure me that my libido "should be returning" around the time of the second trimester, I think my (fatigued) husband and I would both agree that in order to be "returning," it would have had to leave!