the third trimester
the longest shortest weirdest greatest most dramatic time
I hold a growing belief that the third trimester of pregnancy is one of the strangest ordinary experiences human beings regularly endure. The first trimester is also deeply strange, but it’s somewhat privately strange, and mostly feels like being vaguely but unavoidably sick for an extended period of time. The third trimester is obvious to anyone who looks at you, with next to no privacy. It is utter liminality, a space between worlds. In the third trimester, your relationship to time becomes even more intensely ever-present than ever before. As the due date looms closer, you can never forget its presence. I’ve said this many times — being this pregnant feels like being an arrow pulled back in a bow, a bell about to ring, a diver on the edge of the board, a plane about to take off. There is so much energy inside of you waiting to be unleashed, but, in most cases, no real power to choose when or how that happens.
It’s rife with poetry, is what I’m saying, but the brain (or at least my brain) becomes somewhat artless. Instead it feels like mush. Any lucid or even profound thought I have feels disconnected from everything that came before and anything that will come after. Deep work feels near impossible. I’m just way too tired for any of that, too busy lending all my energy and calories to a baby who is methodically adding layers of fat to their body and doubling in weight. It feels hard to locate myself within my own life, or even my own being. Instead, I’ve been taken over by circumstance, what is happening to and in me. That isn’t all bad. It’s a relief sometimes to let life just wash over you, to do a little less meaning-making. Even the writing I’m managing right now doesn’t feel particularly connected through the layers of my life and all I’ve encountered, I feel like I am simply stating facts.
Here, at nearly 34 weeks, I feel preoccupied with materiality — nesting. Gathering things, making them just so. It feels very good to pack a bag for the birth. To fold all the little clothes. To gather things up and make lists. Thinking about objects is easy. Thinking about my whole life is not. As for the birth, I’m excited about it in a strange way. I feel like I understand that it will happen, and I want it to. I had a very vivid dream about my water breaking, and it thrilled me. This is a new feeling, positive anticipation. In previous pregnancies, thinking ahead to birth felt more like dread. I still see it as a journey to the underworld, but that underworld feels somehow darkly enticing. Does that make sense?
I feel challenged by being pregnant almost constantly. It’s hard to eat and drink enough, I feel like I am failing miserably at least once a day. It hurts to walk, it hurts to turn in bed, my digestion is terrible, the heartburn wakes me up. Still, I feel remarkably able-bodied, still able to crouch and pick things up, carry my three year old around, lift and move things, bring in unwieldy groceries, clean the house, do what I need to do, even with my belly measuring two weeks ahead and feeling sleepy all day long. I haven’t gained much weight in this pregnancy, which might be contributing to the spry-ness I feel. I feel a little concerned about that lack of weight gain, but, like I said, belly is measuring two weeks ahead. No one else seems concerned. I started medication for my anxiety for the first time ever, and I’m still waiting for it to reach its full effectiveness, but that feels like a meaningful challenge too, to do something about the mental health messiness I’ve been struggling with. I’m proud of myself for moving through this pregnancy in the way that I have, and I’m proud of myself for seeking help when I needed it. I feel like such a real mom. This is what moms do, we take care of ourselves so we can take care of our people. We ask for help. We suffer the aches and pains to get through the day, and we guiltlessly stay seated while the kids go romp outside with their dad. We let him deal with the dishes after dark so we can sleep a little more. We let people who love us take care of us too. I feel dignified in my pregnant state, like what I am doing is very important, and I do deserve rest and favors. How would I do this without my husband and my family, all of whom shower me with help and love? That women do this alone or with abusive partners or absent family grieves me deeply. I feel so lucky every day.
A big takeaway from this pregnancy for me is that it all really feels worth it. Loving and knowing my children has given pregnancy new meaning, has made it feel much less arbitrary than it did the first or even the second time. That’s my child in there! Who I will (and already) adore! For so long, forever even. Where there used to be ambivalence, there is new fervor. That doesn’t make it easier, but it does make it feel different. This is how I know for sure that I completed a full cycle of matrescence in the course of my first five years of motherhood, having and raising our two boys. This feels like the beginning of a new growth-cycle in my life, one with less “becoming” and more “I am.” The only times I wish the pregnancy away are when I want to meet my baby faster. I even consider doing it all again once more (maybe) just for the joy of it, the explosion of love and life that is a child’s presence in the world, in my world. I don’t want to decide whether this is our last child yet. The childbearing years are a door I don’t feel ready to close, and that’s a buzzy feeling too. More potential energy, more questions, more risk, more challenge, more joy. None of this is easy, but it’s so incredible, you know? It’s one of the most amazing and astonishing things in the world — feeling a baby get bigger inside of you, then holding them in your arms and loving them every day of their life.
Everywhere I go, I am the very image of pregnancy. The big belly, the waddle-walk, the tired eyes, the two boys in tow. There is no ambiguity, it is obvious what is happening in my life, who I am right now. I find other people talking to me out in the world more, saying hello. The health insurance customer service representative on the phone’s voice changes when I tell her I’m pregnant. We talk for ten minutes about our kids before getting down to business. The mom of two younger boys at the mall play place, asking about what it’s like when they’re older, and do we know the sex of the new baby? The nurse practitioner at the dermatologist telling me she just got married and she wants a big family while she does my yearly skin check. My dentist (who I went to high school with) knowing she is safe to continue using her wearable pumps while doing my checkup, sharing that she’s sad to be back from her maternity leave and that it’s been a hard transition. There’s a sisterhood I feel, a willingness to share, to chat, to ask strangers real questions. People light up when I ask after their children. We all love our little families so much. Our daily labor caring for our kids means so much to us. So often daily life requires that we downplay the massiveness of our love.
Maybe all of this sudden gushing is partially hormonal? I feel very aware of my mounting estrogen, which will continue to climb to astonishing heights until birth, then crash just as spectacularly. The lack of hormonal education offered to pregnant women is staggering. You’d think they’d tell us that at least half of the madness we feel is chemical! Everything that is happening to me right now feels extremely dramatic, because it is. The third trimester is rife with drama. I reiterate, it is one of the most inherently dramatic periods of a person’s life! All leading up to a big splashing eleven-o’clock number, the birth. Then, the applause, and everyone wipes off their makeup and goes home, and you just… live. That’s the part I’ll never get used to. You bring your baby home and life simply goes on, postpartum dissolving into sunday monday tuesday wednesday, not knowing what day it is anymore, days running into nights, losing that temporality, not looking forward to anything in particular, until the baby is big and suddenly shouting at you that they can’t find their “super fast running shoes” and you find yourself fantasizing about being pregnant again, surprising even yourself.
A lot of things feel unformed and unclear right now. Will I still be able to meaningfully contribute to our family’s income while I’m taking care of three kids (even with help)? What will become of my art practice? My writing practice? My birth doula work? My business? What about my new book? Will I finish my novel? Will I finish another poetry collection? Will my parents stay healthy? Will my husband’s job stay steady, will he get a raise? What is happening in our country, in the world? Will my kids grow up okay, stay happy and healthy? How fast will the climate crisis accelerate? Where are we all going?
And, will this baby be ok? So vulnerable to be pregnant, to love a baby before you’ve held them crying in your arms, to hear scary stories, to wonder and feel the fear wash over you. I ask my husband this frequently, and he always says yes. My husband is my lightning rod, he catches all my sparks. I try not to worry for real until he worries, and he isn’t worried. He’s excited, and calm, looking forward to staying up late with the baby cozy on his chest watching movies so I can sleep a nice first stretch. So I look forward too, trying to really imagine what it will be like to bring this baby home. It still doesn’t quite feel real. Birth always feels like cataclysm to me, always shatters my foundations. It’s hard to imagine that. So maybe instead I’ll just stay right where I am, in this day where I am so very pregnant and nothing else matters all that much. My boys are playing legos calmly together, a small miracle.
The fact that I am about to ruin this peace with a new baby does not trouble me. I think about “Being Alive,” from Company, possibly Sondheim’s most famous eleven o’clock number, which I listened to on a drive from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis recently, realizing all of a sudden that it could be just as much about parenthood as it is about romantic love. “Someone to sit in my chair, to ruin my sleep, to make me aware, of being alive.” My children have done this for me, and continue to. I feel distinctly alive right now, in the thick of my life in a way that is so real and satisfying and overwhelming. I’m thinking also about that quote from The Correspondent (which I loved): "We are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious, lively, interesting years of our twenties, thirties, forties in summer. We settle into ourselves in autumn, that cool but not yet cold time, rich and aromatic. And in winter we age (brutally) and die." Here I am in my glorious, lively, interesting thirties, the summer of my life. I feel that glow, the fecundity of my life as it is now. The true greenness, the fertility, the overgrowth of love and life. I’m in my wildflower years, everything blooming. It’s also sweltering, fragrant, over-much, too fast, too hot. All of that is well and good, just as it should be. I sit in the shade of it all, awaiting my baby. It is so good to be so alive.
A few birth-y recs:
Excited to try my new TENS Unit during this birth. I bought this one that is pretty new on the market because Elle Tens units were out of stock everywhere. Planning to use it with clients too once I return to birth work.
New ambient music from Saltbreaker is total birth vibes. The title!
Stream Ancestor Midwife
I’ll probably listen to my own birth playlist most though. I like music I can sing along to. Also the new Phoebe Bridgers album should come out just in time, thank goodness.
I’m also so excited about this very cool robe I bought on etsy for my birth and postpartum.
I’m sure I’ll feel crazier and crazier as the weeks go on and birth looms closer. As always, this essay is merely a snap shot of how I feel right this second, and does not intend to speak for all of myself or all pregnant people.
Thanks so much for reading. I love to hear your thoughts — please leave a comment with anything on your mind!
If you like this free newsletter, here are the best ways to support my work as a self-employed writer and artist who is also a full time caregiver:
SHARE WITH A FRIEND! It makes me so happy to hear when folks have sent my essays along to a friend who they know will resonate with it. That’s the best!
SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA! It helps! It really helps!
BUY MY ZINES! I’m really proud of my tiny publishing project, Imaginary Lake, and the zines I’m writing and hand-making. They are largely about pregnancy, birth, and motherhood — with new ones coming soon! You can find them linked above. This is the best way to keep all of this going!
xoxo, more soon
Loved this, I have a 3 month old (my first) and this helped me reminisce about the third trimester and all that was before all that comes next. Such a special and strange time. You’ve captured it so well.
holy cow, that last paragraph! the heat, the life, the too-much-ness, the glory. you named it perfectly.