I am now 34 weeks pregnant and I am feeling more and more ready every day! The only real changes I have been having the past few weeks is my sleeping. I have started to have restless leg syndrome where my legs just ache from the knees down and really the only thing that helps is to just get out of bed. My hips have started to ache every night too so I am sleeping with a pillow in between my legs, but this pain still wakes me up multiple times a night.
The emotions have started to become real! I didn’t really have any crazy crying or outbursts my whole pregnancy, but now that is all changing. I was driving the other day and all of a sudden I just started crying for no reason at all. I wasn’t thinking of anything, nothing had happened, there wasn’t even a sad song on the radio and the tears just started flowing! It was so weird.
I have also started to experience cramping and Braxton Hicks contractions. Not a lot, just here and there. There has been sharp pains and pressure in my pelvic area as well that comes and goes, hoping this means her head is down and she is not breech.
One thing I have started to realize at 34 weeks is how my body has changed. I have thought about this before during my pregnancy. Looking at pictures of my pre-pregnancy body and my belly bump pictures now, I have started to realize that I was way too hard on myself and my body before I got pregnant. This picture is one I found on my phone the other night and at this time I was still weight lifting, but was starting a cut for the summer. In other words, I had started to train and eat to lose fat. Looking at this picture the other night I said out loud, “What the hell was wrong with me?! I can’t believe I thought I needed to lose any kind of fat before.”
Seeing this picture I knew that I had body shamed myself all the time before I got pregnant. I took my body for granted and didn’t appreciate how great I actually looked. I would look at myself in the mirror and see fat I needed to lose so I could have better abs, a butt that needed to be bigger and lifted and arms that needed more muscle and definition. What I should have been seeing is all the hard work and dedication that I had put into my body and how amazing I looked. It is hard being a woman. Society makes us feel like we are never fit enough, pretty enough and overall not good enough.
I hate when people body shame others, but yet here I was doing it to myself all the time for years! Getting pregnant is the best thing that could have happened to me for a couple reasons. First and most important is the little girl I will soon have and second it has made me appreciate my body in many ways. I now feel like I have finally accepted my body before I was pregnant. I know that what I was striving for was exactly how I looked. Lastly, the fact that my body has now grown a human without putting me through the ringer makes me have even more respect and appreciation for my body and what it is capable of.
This is not to say that women who don’t want to have kids or can’t get pregnant shouldn’t feel proud of their bodies. Our bodies are amazing, beautiful and do so much for us whether we are pregnant or not and everyone, especially women should start acknowledging that and recognizing all the amazing parts of themselves instead of what they “think” are flaws.
Changes I am experiencing:
Aversions: Nothing! : )
Cravings: None
Mood: The emotions are taking over
Weight gain: 23lbs total so far
Sleep: Disrupted by aches and needing to pee
Things I eat a lot of right now: Green smoothies consisting of kale, spinach, banana and cuties. At this point I am pretty much eating whatever sounds good because I am tired of eating.
Other: Trying to find that fine line when eating where I am not too full and uncomfortable, but not still hungry. Even over eating just a little is SO UNCOMFORTABLE!