Three pillows

It made me really happy to read your supportive comments in response to my question about blog content. Thank you! And since many of you swear that you don't mind reading about boring old me, instead of my incredibly entertaining son, then here goes ...

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I now need three pillows to sleep at night. I must be pregnant.

I also have to sleep on my side in the fetal position (how ironic), another indication that I'm pregnant, because otherwise I would sleep on my stomach. That hasn't been a real option since the end of the first trimester -- not because my abdomen had grown a whole lot at that point, but because my breasts had! (And they were sore, too.)

Anyway, getting back to those three pillows. Naturally, I need one beneath my head. But I also need one to tuck between my bent knees, to raise my thigh until it is nearly horizontal with my hip. And, as of last night, I need one to stick beneath my belly.

I didn't think I had gotten that big yet, since I don't feel uncomfortably large during the day. But after waking up multiple times last night with an unfamiliar ache in my mid-back, I finally had to admit it. When I lie on my side, the weight of my unsupported belly pulls on my back muscles, especially the part that is right in line with my navel.

I've needed the pillow between my knees for a long time already, much sooner than I did when I was pregnant with Isaac. If I don't support my knee and thigh, they drag my hip downward, and the stretching causes pain in my hip joint. The pillow doesn't cure the problem completely, and it's certainly annoying to have to rearrange it throughout the night, but it helps me to hold my deteriorating body together.

Gotta love those loosening ligaments -- all my connective tissue turned into mush just as soon as I entered the second trimester. And since this leaves my joints and muscles unsupported, I am prone to a dozen little pains, mostly concentrated in my hips and pelvis, including a deep stabbing pain that appears without warning right in the center of either buttock. (Although I also pulled a muscle in my shoulder by sneezing -- ironically while I was lying in down in bed resting after having strained a muscle in my back.)

Most of these little pains appear after I've spent too long (meaning about ten minutes) in one position -- tailbone after propping myself up to read in bed, hips after sitting in a desk chair at work, buttocks after driving. But even though I'm complaining, really it is far from debilitating. I can walk off the worst of the pain after a few minutes.

These ligament-related pains are currently my worst pregnancy side effect. That's because the fatigue, queasiness, and headaches have subsided! Stay tuned for the my third-trimester complaints, however, coming up in just four short weeks.

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I only know that I'm 24 weeks pregnant because I just checked. I keep forgetting the exact number and having to look it up in my datebook. I don't think I ever lost track when I was pregnant with Isaac. So there's another difference with the second pregnancy!

Also, after Isaac was born I kept track of exactly how many weeks old he was for an embarrassingly long time, way after I should have transitioned to calculating his age in months. With this baby, when people ask her age I'll probably just say something like, "Oh, she's about three months old, I think."