An Open Letter To My Third Trimester

Dear Third Trimester of Pregnancy,

I’m just going to come right out and say it: You are a bitch. Every pregnant woman can’t wait to finally meet you, and when they do, you’re all like, “Welcome sucka, you still have 12 weeks to go, and that belly of yours, yeah, it’s about to double in size.”

Wait.

Rewind.

Twelve weeks?! That’s still like 3 months. That’s still like approximately 90 days. That’s like an obscene amount of acid-reflux-induced-pee-three-times-per-night-with-a-Charley-horse-on-top sleeps. No wonder nobody likes you. You are the never-ending trimester, the trimester when being sober for 30 weeks starts to wear on a woman. She just wants to kick back with friends and a few glasses of wine and feel normal again. Because when you are pregnant, you are not normal. You are sort of a less fun version of yourself who snores and has mood swings. You are the girl on the sideline, watching everyone else have all of the fun while a teeny little being swims inside of you karate chopping your bladder while you are trying to…glow. Really?

Shit. Twelve more weeks of this.

Twelve more weeks. And everyone tells you, “Oh, you need to relax. Take care of yourself. Put your feet up, girl.” Yes, you are growing a human and have the best excuse in the world to take their advice, but you can’t even do that because your ribs are being held hostage by an eggplant or, no, make that a large head of cabbage. When you can’t even lounge and be comfortable, you know shit is about to get real.

Yeah, so maybe I was sick in the first trimester and maybe the veins in my legs were painful and bulging in my second, but at least most of my clothes still fit. Then you come along, oh dear sweet third trimester, and now I have underbelly hanging out of my oversized tees and my maternity jeans. Yes, you read that right, my maternity jeans are suffocating my hip bones. Apparently elastic can only stretch so much.

And then I am faced with the dilemma, should I buy bigger clothes? Should I not buy bigger clothes? I will only be wearing them for 12 weeks. But, hello third trimester, 12 weeks is a long freaking time to have underbelly hanging out of your shirts. So you go online and buy $200 worth of bigger maternity clothes because you have no choice. Screw it. You buy an expensive handbag, too, because you start rationalizing costs in terms of money you have saved on martinis and sushi for the past seven months, and unlike maternity jeans, handbags always fit. So there.

And third trimester, I could go on and on about all of the graphic ailments that happen to the body during the last 12 weeks, but I will spare you. All I will say is that one of my biggest fears in life has become sneezing, because we all know what happens when we sneeze and we have a bowling ball sitting on our bladder and we are pregnant with our fourth child. It really is the most fun.

Third trimester, I don’t want to wish you away. I just want you to hurry the eff up. I have survived you three times before, and despite all of my doubts and false alarms that you are coming to an end, eventually you do. You do not last forever. But still, you are in fact a bitch. And because I am pregnant and hormonal and have to deal with things like sternutaphobia (yes, fear of sneezing is actually a thing), you are just going to have to deal with your title. You are a bitch whom I love to hate, and as much as it kills me to say it, I need you. I need you because being with you means I am one step closer to meeting my baby. And for that, you and all of your shenanigans are worth it.

T-minus 90 days.

Bring it.

But, you know, go easy on me. I’m seven years older than I was the the first time we met.

Love,

An (impatient) mama in waiting who will probably soon realize that being in the third trimester of pregnancy is actually easier than raising four kids