The second trimester was one of the most intense, trying times of my life. It was filled with amazing highs and deep lows and of course, lots of things in between. The time flew by and I’m already noticing my energy starting to taper off slowly. There’s tons to do to finish prepping for our final baby but before I dive into planning mode, let’s recap the second trimester.

GENDER REVEAL

First things first, we’re having a baby girl! If you want to see the true shock on my face when we opened that envelope, you can watch the replay of our IG Live here. Even though I was surprised, I’m thrilled that we’re adding another girl to our crew. I wish my hunches had been right at least once, but that’s just for bragging rights. I went 0 for 3 in guessing the sex ahead of time, but honestly? I wouldn’t change a thing. Having our boy was exactly what I needed as a first-time mom and I love that he’ll grow up with sisters. It also helps that the two girls will be born in the same month, so I’m hoping birthday parties will be slightly easier to plan!

Mostly, I’m struck by the gratitude I feel that we’ll have three children. Brandon and I always talked about having three children and it’s surreal to think about actually being parents to three kids. Each one of our kids is a dream come true and I’m truly thankful for this season of life we’re in – what a gift.

NAME REVEAL

Before I tell you her name, I have to give you some context on how we’ve chosen each of our kids’ names.

I have this thing where I have to see the ultrasound photo of my baby before I choose their name. I look at that profile shot and I get a sense for their name. It’s a weird ritual but it’s how I work.

For Isaac, we both loved the name because it was uncommon yet classic and I loved that it meant laughter. We’d chosen that name before we were even married but I had to look at that photo of him before I could definitely say that would be his name.

Picking Luna’s name was more of a struggle. I would stare at her little profile and exclaim “does she look like a Carmen?!” or whatever name we were pondering at the time. After a week of doing this, I finally said, she looks like a Luna.

For this our final baby, I did the same thing. We were taken completely by surprise that we were having a girl. She moves about as much as her brother did so I was convinced I was having a boy. So convinced, in fact, that we only picked boy names! As I looked at her profile, I thought the name Willow would suit her. Brandon wasn’t too sure, so we said we’d think about it.

Then one day, I was listening to a podcast about Waldorf education. As the guest spoke about the process of getting to know the child’s history before they start at a Waldorf school, she mentioned something that struck me. She said that Waldorf teachers ask about how the child was in utero because it helps give them a picture of their temperament.

I thought about how active this little girl is. How she kicks and rolls all the time. And I knew that while Willow was a beautiful name, it didn’t suit her. Willow felt too serene, too subdued for this baby. This baby was full of life.

I texted Brandon and told him the name he had picked was perfect – we’d name her Zoey.

Each of our children’s middle names is a family namesake. Isaac’s is from Brandon’s family, Luna’s is from mine. We considered skipping the namesake tradition with Zoey, since we didn’t really have another name that has been passed down in our families, but ultimately we decided to make our own. We’re giving her my name, Alexandra, as her middle name. It feels like the perfect name for her.

HOW I’M FEELING

I find it funny that I touted how wonderful I was feeling mentally in the first trimester because my mental health took a nose dive pretty much as soon as I entered the second trimester. The stress of running a new business AKA learning how to honor my boundaries and price myself properly was ROUGH. I didn’t do a good job of it…definitely learned a lot though!

Brandon also went back to the office three days a week as part of his work’s hybrid schedule. It was a huge adjustment for all of us after two years of him working from home almost exclusively.

Then Izzy and I got covid and effectively caused my sisters to cancel their birthday party since we’d exposed one of them over Easter. I also lost a second client that week. Thankfully our symptoms were pretty mild and we recovered quickly.

Thankfully my anatomy scan landed after my isolation period ended, so we were able to see baby girl and do our IG Live Reveal. That night, though, our neighbor knocked on our door to tell us that Brandon’s car window was shattered. It was devastating to have to deal with police reports and trying to find footage of what happened on a day where we’d hoped to just celebrate, daydream about what having another girl would look like, and try to narrow down our list of names.

All of that amounted to a ton of anxiety and quite a bit of depression. Part of me feels like I should have seen it coming. One of the first times I registered that I was struggling with anxiety was when I was pregnant with Isaac. I felt it less with Luna, but in hindsight, I can see my low energy was more caused by depression than a tough pregnancy. I was determined not to suffer silently for the third time, so I reached out to my OB and explained the trend of my anxiety spiking noticeably during pregnancy. After a few weeks, I took her up on the medication offer.

Long story short: medication is helping me immensely. I feel more like myself. I feel stable. It’s nice! I’m hoping it continues to work well for me.

As far as physical stuff goes, I have random pain in my sciatic nerve that flares up while I’m walking. I get painful charley horse cramps in my calves in the middle of the night that wake me up, and my face has some dry patches that have left me skipping my tinted moisturizer almost every day. But as far as physically difficult pregnancy symptoms, there aren’t too many. Most of these are taken care of when I get enough water!

CRAVINGS/AVERSIONS

The two things I can say for certain that I’ve craved in the second trimester are bagels with cream cheese and avocado toast. Homemade versions will do but just don’t satisfy the craving the same way. Other random things I’ve craved are shrimp, Nutella toast, french fries, and ice cream – either my Coldstone order of coffee + chocolate ice cream with marshmallows mixed in or strawberry ice cream. Sometimes I’ll crave Ritz crackers to go with my strawberry ice cream, but not always. I think that’s as weird as my palette goes ha!

Sushi (fully cooked rolls only, of course) was something I was craving until recently when it turned into a bit of an aversion. I blame it on trying to make refrigerated sushi from lunch work as dinner leftovers. Learn from my mistake: it doesn’t work!

I still have no desire to eat scrambled eggs unless it’s on a takeout breakfast sandwich. It’s made figuring out a solid at home breakfast routine more difficult than usual. I’m someone who loves breakfast food but hates making breakfast at home. My go-to breakfast parfait sometimes sounds amazingly appetizing and other times sounds awful. Ah, pregnancy.

WHAT I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO

I’m really looking forward to getting our nursery nook put together. The state of our room right now is truly awful, if I’m honest. We started the massive undertaking of sorting through all the baby clothes so we could organize them once and for all and (of course) didn’t realize just how much we had. We ran out of time and ended up shoving a bunch of clothes back into bags and boxes that are now making me crazy. I’ve been researching different storage methods but I know I’ll need to tweak the Internet ideas to fit our specific home. I was hoping we’d move before this baby came, which would have given us the opportunity to easily declutter (why is it so much easier to declutter when you’re moving?) but that’s probably not happening.

I’m also just looking forward to soaking in the summer with Luna, Izzy, and Brandon. The pandemic kind of robbed us from enjoying Luna’s first year of life and I’m determined to spend some time making memories as a family of four that don’t involve staying home all the time.

Mostly, I’m excited to meet our Zoey. I’m excited to bond with her even more, excited to see what she looks like, and really excited for the kids to meet her.