If you thought the first trimester was tough, it’s got nothing on the final few months of pregnancy.
As you approach the end, time will slow down.
What should be three months actually feels more like 18 years.
At times, you will wonder whether you will be pregnant forever.
10 Ways You Know You’re In Your Third Trimester
The weeks will tick by so slowly it will feel like you’re stuck in a black hole where time has no meaning.
Here are 10 ways you know you’re in your third trimester:
#1: You Have To Hire An Industrial Crane For Your Bedroom
It is impossible to get comfy when you’re heavily pregnant, and that is never more true than at night. You might think you’ll spend your nights tossing and turning. Think again. They’re activities reserved for human-shaped bodies.
Instead, you have to hire an industrial crane to help you change position in bed. You finally know how a beetle feels when it gets stuck on its back, tiny limbs wriggling in the air, as it desperately tries (and fails) to right itself.
Your partner will eventually tire of heaving you out of bed. And shoving you from behind, every night, in an attempt to help you roll over, will get too exhausting. Just hire a crane, it’ll be easier.
Sure, your partner might also get annoyed with the incessant beeping as the crane flips you over, but at least he won’t be spending the twilight hours doing manual labour in an attempt to help you get comfy.
#2: You Have Frostbite From Wearing Flip Flops In The Snow
All women should be heavily pregnant in the warmer months. The sweatiness of giving birth on a hot day will be made bearable by the fact you can wear flip flops without getting frostbite in your toes.
In the third trimester, putting shoes on is impossible. Even if you manage to force your swollen feet into a pair of comfy trainers, you’ll have no chance of tying the laces, due to the fact your belly is now bigger than a house.
And don’t even think of attempting to put on socks. It’s just not possible. You’ll have to embrace flip flops, even if you live at the North Pole.
#3: You Take Court-Ordered Anger Management Classes
Women in their third trimester inevitably end up taking anger management classes. Mainly because they’ve punched too many strangers who asked whether they were having twins. Not asked, actually, but joked. Because it’s so hilarious to comment on the size of pregnant women.
There is an upside to this. By the time the pregnancy is over, you will have perfected a right hook that could win you trophies, should you choose to pursue boxing as a career .
#4: You Can’t Eat So Much As A Grape Without Suffering Heartburn
Actually, you don’t even have to eat. Just thinking about taking a nibble on a dry cracker will leave your tongue sitting in a pool of stomach acid big enough to make you retch.
And good luck finding a cure. There’s so little room left inside you that your stomach is already in your throat, so everything you eat will cause indigestion. Of course you can’t digest food anyway; you have no body left, you’re just a human incubator.
And as if getting some sleep wasn’t hard enough in the final weeks, have fun trying to sleep upright. Oh, and don’t worry if you have to give up eating entirely to avoid heartburn, that’s totally fine. It’s not as though you need an additional 500 calories a day during the third trimes… Oh wait.
#5: You Have No Idea What Your Bottom Half Looks Like
Remember your vagina? Ha, no. Of course not. How could you? You haven’t seen it for months. It’s down there somewhere, hidden amidst the undergrowth you haven’t been able to remove because you can’t see it, thanks to the gargantuan bump you once called a stomach.
You haven’t seen your legs for a long time, either, although you know they’re still there. That’s because you get friction burns when the gorilla-like hairs on your legs rub together as you waddle about.
And it’s best not to think too much about your feet. Your once-pedicured, beautifully painted nails are now gnarly AF.
#6: You Have A Daily Panic About Dealing With Contractions
Even the calmest woman feels terrified about labour when Braxton Hicks contractions start. Often described as ‘painless’, those irregular tightenings can be pretty bloody painful.
As the pain radiates from your bump and your lower back, you can be forgiven for shedding a few tears as you wonder what the hell real contractions will feel like.
Sometimes they’ll go on so long you’ll wonder whether this might actually be the main event. Could this be it? Has labour started? Has it?
No. Braxton Hicks. Just nature’s cruel way of preparing you for labour while simultaneously scaring the heck out of you.
#7: You’ve Tidied Behind Things
You can tell you’re in your third trimester when the nesting instinct kicks in. All of a sudden, it’s as though you’re the Energiser Bunny. You’ll be dragging out the fridge so you can clean behind it, balancing on chairs so you can dust away cobwebs, and reorganising your bookshelf like there’s no tomorrow.
Clean isn’t enough; you need everything to be perfect. After all, when this baby arrives, you don’t want him to notice the layer of dust on your picture frames or the fact there’s a tub of out-of-date baking soda in the kitchen cupboard.
You need to know the baby (who actually can’t see far enough to notice any of those things) will be born into a perfectly clean and presentable home.
#8: You Manspread On Public Transport
Long gone are the days of sitting like a ‘lady’ and taking up as little space as possible on public transport. With a fully grown baby sitting in your pelvis, you can manspread like the best of them.
Your bump hangs down so low you’re forced to sit with your legs spread wide, the tip of your bump protruding down to your thighs. You take up a seat and a half, at least. Even the most obnoxious manspreader is forced to sit nicely when perched next to you on the train.
#9: You Could Win A Burping & Farting Contest Against A Teenage Boy
Yep, your ‘lady’ days are well and truly behind you. With all of your organs squished into a space the size of a marble, it’s no wonder you’re suffering with a little excess gas. You can’t control it.
You spend your days belching and trumping like a teenage boy. And these aren’t ladylike odourless gas releases. Hell no, they smell like rotten egg. The good news is, nobody is going to risk upsetting the heavily pregnant woman by pointing it out, so burp and trump to your heart’s content.
#10: You Get Breathless Just Thinking About Walking
“Oh, do lots of exercise when you’re pregnant”, they said. “It’ll keep you healthy”, they said.
What they didn’t say was by the end of the pregnancy, you’ll have the lung capacity of a goldfish and be unable to take more than three steps without having to stop for a rest.
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