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Thursday's Child

Archives for November 2020

My Second Trimester

Parenting1

My pregnancy is moving along quickly, and now that I’m in the third trimester (31 weeks to be exact), I’m giving an update on my second trimester by topic, similar to the way I did for my first trimester.  We are so thankful that baby boy is healthy and that my pregnancy has been pretty fairly easy overall.  Once again, I’m not planning on sharing anything super personal, but my disclaimer for this post is that typical pregnancy topics will be discussed!

Symptoms:  I had some minor insomnia towards the end of my second trimester, although Jamie actually had more of this than I did (I think it was a pregnancy sympathy symptom! :).  We don’t have any trouble going to sleep for the most part, but one or both of us would wake up in the wee hours of the morning and not be able to go back to sleep.  Often this active little boy kicking didn’t help… luckily, his kicks never seemed to wake me up, but just sometimes kept me up if I woke up for another reason.  I had what I think were a few Braxton-Hicks contractions throughout this trimester, but they were painless.  At the end of this trimester, I got an itchy rash on my belly, back, and boobs which my dermatologist sister-in-law believes was contact dermatitis.  Hydrocortisone cream seemed it clear it up thankfully.  I’ve had some minor congestion and a couple minor bloody noses (the first I’ve ever had in my life!  I’m not a fan), and some very minor back pain, especially if I’m bending over a lot, like to pick up stuff off the floor.  Back stretches have seemed to help.  I’ve noticed that I literally grunt as I bend/get up or down now, which is a little funny.  I also feel like my stomach is getting a bit squished in there, and I tend to feel pretty full after eating, especially at night.  That sounds like a lot, but it’s all been so minor that I don’t really have much to complain about and have really felt pretty normal.  Plus I had so much more energy in the second trimester compared to the first, which has been nice.  Second trimester really is the best!

Cravings:  In the second trimester, I craved lots of fruit, sweets, and baked goods, and in general, I was just a lot more hungry.  It would come in spurts, but after eating pretty healthy in the first trimester, I felt like I went downhill a bit in the second!  My sweets cravings and hunger in general made it a bit more of a challenge to be super healthy, but I did ensure that I was getting a variety of nutrients to Baby V in the form of different foods (and hopefully to help prevent allergies as well), along with satisfying my sweet tooth!

Aversions:  Honestly, none.  All food was good to me in the second trimester, ha!

Weight:  Wow, this was an interesting one.  I gained very little in the first trimester – only a pound or two – and in the first month of my second trimester, I gained nothing.  BUT, as my doctor put it, I made up for it the next month when I gained 9 pounds!  She said it was completely normal and that weight gain during pregnancy isn’t linear, but I totally wasn’t prepared for that!  I can specifically recall one weekend (prior to the 9-pound gain) when we visited my grandma at the lake, and I just couldn’t satisfy my hunger.  I was incredibly hungry and ate probably 5 good-sized meals in one day (not to mention snacks!).  I tried to eat healthy, nutrient-dense, high-protein meals, but the hunger definitely came in waves, and when those waves were strong, there was no stopping them!  After that, I gained a couple pounds, but nothing too significant.  I gained about 11 pounds in the second trimester and 13 pounds total from the start of pregnancy.  My bump has definitely popped for the world to see!

Clothes:  I definitely moved into maternity clothes in the second trimester!  I can still wear some non-maternity items, because as mentioned previously, I don’t wear a lot of tight tops, so many of my more loose items still fit.  But I’m definitely in maternity or elastic-waist paints only, and I’m recognizing that less and less is fitting these days.  I got some great maternity clothes at a kids/baby resale shop, and I’ve bought a few new non-maternity items in size large.  I haven’t been interested in spending a lot of money on new maternity clothes (it feels like such a short time to wear them and I’m not exactly feeling my cutest right now!), but I did buy a few fun Halloween maternity shirts just to get in the spirit!

Workouts:  I’ve continued to run – my runs are slow and short, but at least it’s something.  I realize how much fatigue was affecting me during the first trimester when I tried to run, because my energy was SO much better when running in the second trimester, although I have found myself slowing down a little/feeling my weight as of late.  We’ve also been going on lots of long walks, and I notice that sometimes those feel almost more challenging than a shorter run, because about 30-40 minutes into a long walk, my abs feel like they kind of just give up on holding the baby and my stomach just sort of drops uncomfortably.  I’m definitely trying to keep it up though, because I know it’s good for me.  I’ve been doing back exercises and have been trying to do some prenatal yoga, but I haven’t been very consistent with it.

Doctor visits:  We got to see our baby boy again at 20 weeks!  This was so much fun, because he was moving all around, sucking his thumb, and smacking his lips!  It was cute to see his profile – several people has said that it looks like mine, especially the nose, but we think he might have Jamie’s chin.  We’ll see if we think the same when he’s born!  I didn’t pass the glucose screening test and ended up having to take the 3-hour glucose test, but luckily, I passed that one and confirmed that I do not have gestational diabetes.  The 3-hour test was not fun, but it was worth it to know that everything is good with my health and the baby’s.  Other than that test in question there for a few weeks that was later confirmed to be fine, it’s been all good news about a healthy baby boy so far!  We feel so grateful.

Movement:  Baby boy is a mover and a shaker!  I generally find that he’s active throughout the night (luckily it’s not waking me up, but as mentioned above, I do notice if I’m already up), but he’s also active in the mornings and later parts of the evening.  Afternoons seem to be his rest time.  We’ve started seeing my stomach really move a lot, and one time when we shined a flashlight on my belly, we watched him kick the light as we would move it.  That was pretty fun to experience.

High points:  Our family gender reveal/finding out that he’s a boy was definitely the best part of the second trimester!  Jamie’s parents came down and my family was there for it too.  We had such a great time and were SO excited to finally know!  It made it feel so much more real for us, and I have liked feeling like I can plan.  It was also fun to see him on the ultrasound, to get our maternity photos back, to start decorating the nursery, and to go on our babymoon/second anniversary trip to West Texas.  We had originally planned on going to Barcelona, but given the COVID-19 situation, we had to cancel our trip.  In the end, I was actually thankful, because being on a long plane ride didn’t sound quite so appealing this far into pregnancy.  We had a great time exploring Big Bend, Marfa, and several other towns in the mountains and deserts of Southwest Texas.

Low points:  The itchy rash mentioned above that I had for several weeks was definitely a low spot, as was the minor aches and pains, minor sleep issues, and the glucose tests!  But I really feel fortunate that those were the worst parts of the trimester because they could certainly be a whole lot worse!

Random:  I guess the second trimester ends in Week 27?!  I’m still trying to figure all this out!  We still have lots to do on the nursery, but it’s slowly but surely coming along.  It’s travel-themed, and I’ve been enjoying dreaming up the decorations!  We also have a name picked out (we pretty much knew what it would be right away when we found out that he was a boy), but we are keeping it a secret until his birth.  We can’t wait to meet our guy in a few short months!

P.S.  My first trimester, and my favorite pregnancy resources.

DIY “Bun in the Oven” & Chef Costumes

Holidays, Miscellaneous68

I know that Halloween is long gone by now, but I always like to share DIY costume tutorials and can never seem to get my act together to post them BEFORE Halloween.  I do enjoy looking back on them though, and in any case, the tutorials may come in handy for others before Halloweens to come, so I post them for that purpose.

This year, Jamie was a chef, and our baby boy and I were a bun in the oven!  I wanted to do a fun pregnancy costume, and this one was easy to put together.  You guys should know – I wouldn’t really call myself a crafty person.  I can be creative at times, and in social settings, I enjoy doing crafts for fun, but it’s honestly not my favorite thing to do on my own.  It’s just not generally how I prefer to spend my time, although the end results, if I love what I’m making, can certainly make it worthwhile to do every so often.  And for some reason, I always love planning out a fun DIY Halloween costume, but I admittedly end up procrastinating on it every year until the last second.  If you decide to make this costume, I would recommend starting it several days in advance, as the spray paint of the oven and the paint and glue on the shirt need time to dry.  However, this ended up being one of my favorite costumes to make, because it didn’t feel too tedious, we didn’t spend too much time on it (despite the number of steps below – it’s pretty easy), and I think it really turned out well.

There are 3 components to this costume – the chef outfit, which was not homemade because I already owned most of the components, having graduated from culinary school (but as most people may not have the items, I will discuss where to find them later on in the post); the oven, which Jamie helped me with (especially important to have someone to help with this when you’re pregnant – more on this later); and the shirt with the cinnamon bun, which I made.  Here are my step-by-step instructions if you’re interested in making this costume:

To make the oven, you’ll need:

  • A large cardboard box that you (or whoever is wearing the oven) can fit into.  We had a large square one, and it ended up being shorter on my torso once I cut out the head hole than I would have guessed by looking at it, but we ended up taping the flaps down and painting over the tape so it was taller.  You can also get a taller box to start, and then if you’d like to cut off the flaps instead of taping them down, it might be easier/sturdier.
  • Packing tape
  • Pencil
  • Ruler
  • Box cutter
  • Silver spray paint
  • Plastic condiment/portion cups (like these)
  • Wax paper
  • Scissors
  • Elmer’s glue
  • Aluminum foil
  • Black chunky knit velvet yarn (like this one)
  • Hot glue
  • Black sharpie (with a medium to finer point)
  • Black construction paper
  • Corner rounder (optional)
  • Silver sharpie, marker, or paint pen
  • Neon yellow or green chalk pen or paint pen

Directions:

  1. First, ensure box is taped up on the sides and bottom to be sturdy enough to stay in place (no need to go overboard – just add tape if there are any corners where the box has torn, etc.).
  2. Cut a round hole that your head will fit into in the center of the bottom panel of the box with a box cutter.  I used a sharpie to draw a circle first (I did it freehand, as it doesn’t have to be perfect, but you can also use a round object as a stencil if you’d prefer).  We started slightly too small, then ended up having to go a little larger so my head would fit through.
  3. Put the box over your head with your head through the cut-out circle to ensure that it fits comfortably and to determine if you’d like to leave the flaps on the top of the box (now the bottom of the oven) on or off.  As mentioned above, our box was a little short in the torso, so we opted to leave them on and tape the corners to make a longer box, but if your box completely covers your torso without the flaps, you can cut them off.
  4. Draw and cut out circular arm holes in the sides of the box – where you cut them is going to depend on your body and what’s comfortable, so the best thing to do is to try the box on and see where your shoulders and arms naturally fall.  Jamie helped me with this, and we measured down from the top on each side to ensure that they were somewhat even. Try the box on again to make sure it fits!
  5. Next, identify the part of your stomach that you would like to be showing when the oven door is open, and then try on the box in the front of the box where the oven door would be, draw a rectangle-shaped door with a pencil (or Sharpie – it will get painted over anyway) and ruler to make your oven door.  Again, this is going to vary with everyone’s body size, but on our box, which was about 2 feet tall (inclusive of the flaps taped down to make it taller), our rectangular oven door was about 9 inches down from the top of the oven, 2.5 inches from each side, and 5 inches from the bottom of the oven.  I made the bottom side of the door a dotted line, which represents where it would fold, and the rest of the lines were solid, indicating where Jamie would cut.  Cut out the top and sides of the oven door, then fold down.
  6. Draw and cut out a smaller rectangle to make a window within the oven door – we made ours an even 2 inches smaller than the oven door itself.  Since the oven door will stay open, if your cardboard door seems flimsy after you cut out the window, you can reinforce it with tape on the outside of the door where it won’t be seen when it’s open.
  7. Spray paint the oven with silver spray paint.  If you are pregnant, have someone else do this for you just to ensure that you avoid the paint fumes and keep your little growing baby safe!  You don’t really have to spray paint the inside, but ensure that you paint the inside of the oven door thoroughly.  Let dry for a day or two.
  8. While you are spray painting, go ahead and paint the outside of 4 condiment/portion cups silver too – these will be dials for the stove burners.  Let dry for a day or two.
  9. Take 4 large squares of foil, and for each square, fold in corners to the center, then fold edges around inside to make a circle shape.  If you turn over so the pieces are on the bottom, these will be the start of your stove burners.  Hot glue them onto the top of the oven around the head hole.
  10. Cut a nice long piece of the chunky knit velvet yarn and, starting in the center of each foil burner, begin hot gluing the yarn in a spiral shape on top of the foil.  It’s best to glue small sections at a time, adding the glue directly to the foil and then pressing the yarn onto the glue, and then repeating until you’ve reached the edge of the foil.  This helps you avoid having the glue dry before you have a chance to press the yarn onto the glue.
  11. Cut out a rectangle of wax paper just a little larger than the oven window and use Elmer’s glue to glue to the outside of the oven door, so that when the oven door is down, the glued edges are not seen.
  12. Hot glue the condiment/portion cups onto the oven in a row – we added them to the very top of the side with the oven door.
  13. For the panel with the buttons – this is probably the part that seems the most daunting but it’s really not so bad – use a ruler to cut out a rectangle out of black construction paper, and then use a pencil (and ruler, if desired) to draw out buttons and the digital clock/temperature panel.  You can model your panel after mine, or you can use your own oven’s panel as a model if it’s easier.  If you desire, you can round the corners of the panel with a corner rounder.
  14. For the digital clock panel, I colored in a rectangle with black sharpie (it barely showed up on the black construction paper but that was the look I was going for), and then I used neon yellow and green chalk markers to draw digital numbers – 375 for the degrees, and 1:23 pm for the time (1/23 is our baby boy’s due date, so that was just a fun little detail).
  15. For the buttons, I used a silver paint pen to color them in, then used a finer point sharpie to label the buttons.  I modeled mine after my oven.  When you look close, you can see that my buttons are NOT perfect, but I promise – you can’t tell from far away.
  16. Using the black sharpie, make a notch on the top of the condiment/portion cup dials to indicate what temperature the dial is on, then draw the temperature settings around the dials.  I put “OFF” in a box on the top, then “LO” and “HI” on either side of it.  I put number “5” on the bottom, and then filled in “1-4” and “6-9” around each dial.  With that, you’re all done with the oven!

To make the cinnamon bun shirt, you’ll need:

  • A black t-shirt
  • Chalk
  • Ruler
  • Silver “puff” fabric paint
  • Beige or tan felt (I used some that I had leftover from last year’s Halloween costume) – you really only need one small sheet
  • Brown felt (I used some that I had leftover from a Halloween costume in years past) – all you need is scraps or one small sheet at most
  • Fabric scissors
  • Pencil
  • Fabric glue
  • White “puff” fabric paint (optional)

Directions:

  1. First, you’ll want to put on the black t-shirt and determine how big the inside of your oven needs to be.  The easiest way to do this is to put on the cardboard box oven and use chalk to draw marks on the shirt around the edges of the oven door.
  2. Using the chalk and the marks as a guide, draw a trapezoid to give the inside of the oven some “depth of field.”  Then draw a rack with a grid pattern with the chalk, using a ruler if needed.  I actually took a photo of the inside of my oven and used this for reference when I was drawing.
  3. Outline the inside of the oven and the grid with the silver puff paint.  Let dry fully, and once it’s dry, you can use a wet washcloth to carefully wipe off the remaining chalk marks.
  4. Using a pencil, draw a cinnamon roll shape on the beige/tan felt.  I tried to create mine from a partial side-top view like you’d see it in an oven, but if it’s easier to make one from a top view, that will work too – the important thing is just for it to be recognizable.  The best way to describe how I drew mine was that I drew a flattened circle/oval shape, and then made a rough/imperfect spiral that started wide at the bottom of the oval and got tighter/more flat as it got to the top, and ended about 3/4 of the way from the top of the oval.
  5. I used the fabric scissors to cut out the oval, and then cut around the spiral that I had drew.  One thing to note when I was cutting the spiral – I didn’t cut out any pieces at this point, but just cut the spiral and stopped to give it some “looseness.”
  6. Then, using the beige/tan felt cinnamon roll as a guide, I cut very thin curved strips of the brown felt and pieced them together to fill in the gaps around the spiral.  This is supposed to represent the cinnamon inside the roll.
  7. Using the fabric glue, glue the beige/tan cinnamon roll onto the puff paint oven rack, and then glue the brown cinnamon strips on top.
  8. Icing is typically added to cinnamon rolls AFTER they come out of the oven, but I opted to add the icing to my bun in the oven just for the cuteness factor.  If you’d like to add icing, use the puff paint to draw icing on the top of the cinnamon and dripping down the sides.  I googled “cinnamon roll” and used a photo as a guide, but I will say that it was more difficult than I thought to make the frosting look realistic.  Again, it doesn’t have to be perfect – just so it’s recognizable.  Let dry fully and you’re done with your cinnamon bun!

For the chef costume, you either need a chef coat (found at a costume store or a restaurant supply store – I already had one from culinary school that Jamie wore, as mentioned) OR you can use an apron of choice.  My biggest chef coat was a little too tight for Jamie to button, so he left it open!  I got a Jamie a chef’s hat and white bandana (you could also use a black one) from Hobby Lobby – here is a video on how to tie a cravat (neckerchief) if you’re interested.  We always left the “tails” tucked out in culinary school, so that’s how Jamie’s looks in the photos, but other than that, we utilized the same method.  I couldn’t find cheap chef pants for Jamie, so he just wore jeans.  I just wore jeans with my oven costume as well, and it was nice to be comfy and no-fuss, especially while pregnant!

And there are your costumes!  Here’s the finished product:

 

I hope these costumes might be good inspiration for future costumes.  I can’t wait to do family costumes with our little guy next Halloween!

P.S.  Our DIY Pizza & Pizza Delivery Guy Costumes from last year, plus lots of other DIY costume ideas!