Week 13: Starting The Second Trimester

0:11Speaker 1:You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast. Mom and Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on.

0:21Speaker 2:I am pregnanty.

0:27Speaker 3:Welcome to Hello Bump.

0:28Speaker 1:We're making pregnancy less overwhelming and more manageable.

0:30Speaker 3:I'm Grace Ruefrey.

0:31Speaker 1:I'm pregnant for the first time, and I've officially hit the second trimester, which is where I have been promised that everything gets better.

0:38Speaker 2:I'mianta Pittman. I'm a formerly big athlete, I'm a mother of six, and I'm now an obstetric trainee.

0:43Speaker 1:Each week, Yanna and I will be holding your hand week by week through the mysterious, perplexing and sometimes quite annoying miracle pregnancy.

0:51Speaker 3:Week thirteen And what.

0:54Speaker 1:Size is our baby in the first week of the second trimester?

0:57Speaker 3:Well, still with fruit. We gotta go with a kiwi fruit.

0:59Speaker 2:But as you say, it is a pig milestone make it into that second semester.

1:02Speaker 1:Yeah, it could be a mini cactus medicatus, a minisucculent.

1:06Speaker 2:Small cat of corn, like those little tiny ones about Yeah, a army. These days, I've seen a lot more of those kind of fancy beans.

1:12Speaker 1:But and how have they developed. What's happening in this first week at the second track, Mistim, I'm.

1:18Speaker 2:Going to go with something fun. They can now suck their thumb or form a fist.

1:21Speaker 1:I think I'm swear so cay because their fingers aren't webbed anymore.

1:25Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think they're still I don't actually if they've still got some webbing maybe the base of the finger, but they're certainly making that sort of motion to go up towards their mouth, which I think is quite cute. Babies, testes and ovaries are now fully developed already at thirteen weeks, so they've still got to move along way. So the boys' tests have to drop down like descend outside, but their actual the components of the testicles are there and present.

1:43Speaker 2:This remember how we talked about the umbilicalle I still don't know. I'm sorry when full is made, but this is the way the intestines actually go back into their proper place. So initially, if you were looking at notes saying, you'd actually see the babies and testlines outside of its body, and then it does multiple rotations and goes back inside to albi housed like a slinky. Yeah a little bit, Yeah, I can't of it. Look would look very nice on an option, but I've never really seen it.

2:05Speaker 1:So, but can you see it as that small stage?

2:08Speaker 2:I think it looks like a blob, yeah, and the abdom looks round and big so and the last ones the baby's vocal cords are starting to form, not that they're gonna make any noises for a while, but that's when when you're, you know, six weeks into it, when the baby's born and that are not shut up. You can know that from it's been in development since thirteen weeks.

2:25Speaker 3:What happened? What's happening to me? What's happening with my body?

2:30Speaker 2:Your ligaments is now stretching, so you're quite commonly feeling that sort of around ligament pain instead abdominal and groin pain. I think at some point we'll talk about when the red flags of that sort of pain need to develop, because things like appendicide still happen, even a very intortion still happens. That's where you're overy twists. So there's lots of little things we need to think about. But at this point, ninety percent of the time pain is related to those ligaments stretching, and you might see that dark line forming on your belly from your pivotpone, which usually goes away out pregnancy.

2:55Speaker 3:By the way, is does everyone get that? I didn't. Yeah, I don't. I feel like stretch marks. Some do, some don't. Oh, you cannot get stretch marks.

3:04Speaker 2:I do not want to have all the women on this podcast to hate me. But I still haven't got stretch marks after all those breaks.

3:10Speaker 1:Isn't the so with the line stretch marks and the belly button popping.

3:14Speaker 2:You've got that still still and then I really want to dedicate an episode to it later. And I had the worst volvo varicosis because I had testicles down there. So I think it's okay that I got my stretch marks.

3:24Speaker 3:What is it? Highlight though everybody's body is different.

3:26Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you've just said some terrifying things that we'll get too. Is this normal?

3:31Speaker 3:Is it normal? Is this normal?

3:34Speaker 1:When I lay down and run my hand along my stomach, I think there's like it's hard.

3:41Speaker 3:There's a definitely a like a thing. That's the first baby bub you've got. That's right.

3:45Speaker 2:Yeah, So most women can now start feeling if you're really if you lie down and you lie quietly, you can start feeling like your pubic bone is bigger than it used to be, and it's actually the uterus now popping outside the top of the pubic.

3:55Speaker 1:Bone, and one of the things we can do at week thirteen.

3:59Speaker 2:So hopefully I've had your screening and you are feeling wonderful now and moving on to that next chapter of your pregnancy. You've obviously got a book in the test if you do want the diagnostic stuff, but if you've gone with standard hospital care and not with midw free care, soon you'll have your booking in visit. So if you've gone with MGP, you've likely already had it. But if you haven't and your GP's been managing most of your pregnancy, it's time to book in with the hospital. All public hospitals will take you, Okay, there's no chance they're not going to take you. They have to if you're in their local area. In fact, the hospital I work out takes women from all over the states, so it's reassured someone will be there present at your birth. But it's just now time to start that booking in processing and getting the familiar with what your body is and what's going on with your pregnancy.

4:38Speaker 1:And if anyone is waiting to get into MTP, I might just share that it took me quite a few weeks to get in. At this point, I was still doing sharecare with the hospital and my GP and waiting to see if I was on the list.

4:50Speaker 3:Late call.

4:51Speaker 1:I got a late call.

4:51Speaker 3:It's amazing. It does happen very often.

4:54Speaker 1:Week sixteen, I think I got the call. Yeah, and I was actually at work and I missed it. And I saw that I had a voicemail, and I was like in a.

5:01Speaker 3:Record, and I was like, oh my god, what.

5:03Speaker 1:If they just move on to the next person on the list and I've missed my opportunity.

5:07Speaker 3:Yeah.

5:07Speaker 2:Look, And I think that's a good point, is if you're really keen to be on that program and you did not find out, you know, till later, and you're pregnant, ring them up and keep asking because unfortunately, women do get taken off that when they get higher risk pregnancies. So for example, if they've had diabetes or something that excludes them from the MGP program.

5:21Speaker 3:Not always diabetes.

5:22Speaker 2:Don't worry, ladies, if you have diabetes, that's still usually okay with MGP programs, but there might be something much worse that is requiring them to move care and then you might get us just like you did.

5:40Speaker 1:The talk kit for this week is now that I know that she's fine and also that she's a she, which is delightful. I did start telling more people, but I was it's quite excited about having a girl. Like I said last week, that's what I wanted. You've seen how many babies come into.

5:58Speaker 3:The hundreds, thousands, thousands. Is gender disappointment a thing? Very much?

6:03Speaker 2:It is, And it's interesting because and I don't mind admitting that I really wanted a girl the same as you and my first little guy, I was a boy, and I was really glad that I found out what he was because I remember when I first found out, I was disappointed. I'm going to be really frank and honest because I think not owning that makes other people who feel disappointment feel guilty and bad. It was a healthy pregnancy, he was a healthy little boy. Within a couple of weeks. I was ecstatic he was a guy.

6:26Speaker 2:But it allowed me to then celebrate at birth and not have that disappointment as they're coming into the world.

6:31Speaker 3:Everybody's different.

6:31Speaker 2:One of the times I think you really need to consider it is if you've got two or three boys already and you're pregnant for the fourth time and you're hoping it's a girl, it's quite commonly going to be a boy. And therefore that disappointment is palpable in the birth unit like you do see it, and women struggle to bond with the baby because it's not what they were hoping for or they envisioned it being something else. So don't get me wrong, there's not many surprises left in the world, and it's a pretty beautiful surprise if you can hold onto it, and if it genuinely does not matter, then it's a wonderful thing to wait and enjoy.

6:59Speaker 3:It gives you an also.

6:59Speaker 2:Motivation when you're in that throes of labor, to I'm going to about to find out what I'm having. But if you know you're going to be disappointed with one or the other, sometimes it's actually better to find out and then and to love what you've got on the inside and name him or her and have that you know that time to be reassure. Now one more thing, Testicles and vaginas look very different at birth from what you expect them to look, so I have had plenty of dads go, it's a boy, and it's just a very big vulver, so have a really good look between the baby's legs because it's very full of hormones and blood at birth.

7:32Speaker 1:Interesting in terms of people going, oh, it's such like a beautiful surprise for me, I found out the sex for two reasons. One, I was feeling so sick. I wanted to try to connect. Yeah, and I know to just say he or she it seems like a silly thing, but it was just to start, I guess, making them a person instead of the parasite that's.

7:53Speaker 3:The life out of me.

7:55Speaker 1:And also in terms of the surprise element for me, I thought, it's a surprise whenever you find out the information, and if you know in an envelope that information exists, it's just choosing not to know rather.

8:07Speaker 3:Than it being a surprise. That's so true.

8:09Speaker 1:So I also thought, on the day, there's going to be so many other things going on that I'm not really going to care.

8:15Speaker 3:Yeah, So I found out for those reasons.

8:17Speaker 2:There's great reasons, and it'd be nice to hear what other people choose and why they do it too, because I remember when when I first had my baby's eighteen years ago. Now my eldest my twins are three, but he's eighteen. It's a big age gap, and it was no one could so it was only people who could afford to find out would find out, whereas nowadays lots of people choose not to because it's no longer as popular. It's been like underarm hair, you know, there used to be no one once is coming back and it's actually vaginal hair is the same, which we should talk about one time. The matter, well, it's very different downstairs for ladies now lots and lots more hair. So the cultural changes when it comes to baby names and baby gender of eels and everything.

8:50Speaker 1:You know, I do have questions on that of whether you've seen everything and whether you and whether you care about what.

8:56Speaker 3:You're not a care?

8:57Speaker 2:Yeah, great, I promise you there is absolute And that's a good thought for this week.

8:59Speaker 3:What not to stress about is we do not care.

9:02Speaker 2:I've seen at the least two thousand vaginas and I cannot remember yours or anybody else's for that matter of age. So yeah, it's whatever's most comfortable.

9:09Speaker 1:For you, whatever you can reach at this point where you can.

9:12Speaker 3:Reach is a good point.

9:16Speaker 1:We hope you enjoyed this episode of Hello Bump. We have so many episodes of this series filled with tips and stories from women and experts who've been through it all before.

9:25Speaker 2:You can go back and listen to everything else Hello Bump related in this podcast, and.

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9:35Speaker 2:This episode was produced by Courtney Ammenhauser with audio production by Tom Lyon.

9:39Speaker 3:We'll catch you next time. Bye.

9:41Speaker 1:This episode of Hello Bump was made in partnership with Huggies