Second Trimester

The second trimester was supposed to be the “sweet spot”.

Since I didn’t have morning sickness in the first trimester, the sweet spot I was looking forward to was having more energy. And I did, but it wasn’t the incredibly high amounts that I had been looking forward to; or maybe it was - but the difference was me - I was moving slower. I noticed it would take me longer to complete the same tasks I had been performing for over 6 seasons. On the long hot harvest days of summer, I started to get these strange crampy feelings, which to me was my body telling me that I needed to go sit down in the shade and drink some water; I later realized they were braxton hicks contractions.

The Thursday to Sunday harvest to market grind was tough, and by the end of the day on Sundays my legs and feet would be swollen from all the standing.

And to top it off, I still didn’t really look pregnant, just big. I wanted people to know, but I felt super awkward bringing it up. “Yup, those are Early Girl tomatoes, sorry we sold out of Sungolds, oh, by the way I’m pregnant.”

I had to do some deep internal digging during the second trimester, and redefine “productive”. Pre-pregnancy, a productive day for me was getting everything on my list crossed off and then some, cruising through chores, plantings, harvest lists, deliveries and coming home and still having energy to make dinner. During pregnancy that wasn’t realistic.

I started to prioritize the daily and weekly tasks and decided what could be left undone. I had been the one who made the majority of our meals, and I suddenly had no desire to cook or inspiration in the kitchen beyond smoothies, so a lot of the cooking duties fell on my husbands shoulders. We’re lucky to have family so close, and when my mom found out how hard of a time I was having with meals, she would make three or four meals and bring them to us at markets to help us supplement our weeks dinners.

And all of this made me feel bad, like I was being lazy and not living up to my full potential, and it took my midwife reminding me over and over again that I was pregnant. I was building a human. Just because I couldn’t see what was going on inside of me, shouldn’t make me feel unproductive.