Being in the third trimester of pregnancy means we are past the sweet spot! I was constantly learning how to live in this preggo body everyday, while busy preparing for baby’s arrival!
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The Belated Baby journey
If you haven’t been following our belated baby journey, check out the previous posts for the First trimester diary, Second trimester diary, our gender reveal cake and more on pregnancy and motherhood here!
Third trimester = Achy and tiring times!
While pregnancy had been pretty easy for me in the Second trimester, as the final months hit, that is when the discomforts sets in.
In my last months, I cannot stand or sit for long. My legs get tired from supporting baby’s weight. There is also constant upper back pain (yep you are reading it right, not lower but upper!) and a tearing pain under my left ribs. Sometimes I just had to tell (almost yelled at) baby, “No! Don’t kick into my ribs!!!!”
This period of pregnancy helped me learn to listen to my body. I started to take frequent naps or simply lying down to relax my back in between tasks. Having been a slow person for most of my life, this time around I learned to use my “comfortable window” efficiently. No more long showers and sophisticated cooking!
Stressful hiccups: GBS positive and a sunny-side-up baby!
While pregnancy has been pretty smooth sailing for the first months without gestational hypertension nor diabetes, the last month threw some unpleasant surprises at us!
GBS positive!
The first bad news was GBS test came back positive. GBS stands for Group-B strap. It is a strain of bacteria that is found 1 in 4 pregnant women. The bacteria is not harmful for mom, however it can cause an infection for baby during vaginal birth and potentially lead to serious consequences.
Sounds pretty scary right?
To actively manage the risk for being GBS positive, a common practice is to inject IV antibiotics to the mom whenever active labor begins and especially urgently when water breaks.
Yet researching further into the impact of antibiotic use during labor and delivery, it seems to be doing a lot more harm. We learned that it can kill the good bacteria in the gut and birth canal for mama, even increasing risk of leaky gut, allergies and vitamin K deficiency bleeding (VKDB) for baby!!
After careful consideration, we eventually decided to decline the IV antibiotics and only open to use it when risk factor arises during labor. I also started taking probiotics hoping to build a strong colony of good bacteria. For baby, we got the oral vitamin k and goats milk formula to manage the risk for VKDB. Both were quite a wild search but glad we finally got our hands on them!
From sunny-side-up to over-easy!
The second hiccup we faced was finding out baby is in a sunny-side-up position at 36, 37 weeks! This means baby is facing out and his spine is against mine. This stressed me out so much as such baby position is known to cause painful back labor!
I could only blame myself for the past few weeks of lying inclined on my back to try to relax my back just to fall asleep. What I could do from now is to kick this bad habit and sleep on my side right away, which took me a while to get used to and learn how to manage the pain still!
For this we are beyond grateful that mamas from church has blessed us so much. Being able to borrow the pregnancy pillow and the birth ball really helped making side sleeping and being on all fours a lot easier! Thank God baby eventually got into the left occiput transverse position, which is the most optimal for delivery!
Third trimester mental state
Argh! Baby brain!!
All the pregnancy app says third trimester is the time when baby’s brain is developing rapidly and sucking up mama’s omega-3 store, and I can definitely attest to that. There was foggy mind, clumsiness and irrational decisions made. Though I did not (but almost) cut myself when chopping veggies, I did dropped and cracked my newer phone and accidentally corrupted our camera’s SD card!! All that cute maternity shoots taken at hubby’s childhood neighborhood were out the window (and yes, the hormones made me cry a whole morning over it). We eventually made it up with some nice evening shoots on a cold night!
The only record left from our original maternity shoot 
Our make up photoshoot session
This is when I also started supplementing with omega 3 capsules, the brain fog eventually went away, I got less clumsy and hopefully will make baby smarter and healthier too!
Burst of energy!
People say you will get a burst of energy towards the end of pregnancy, and this was true for me! I found myself having the confidence to drive again and I tried to make good use of it. While hubby is working from home, I drove around to pickup Facebook marketplace finds for the nursery, go grocery shopping for batch cooking… I even went out for a few girls date hangouts!
3, 2, 1… Maternity leave!
When the final trimester arrived, a countdown began in my mind for when maternity leave begins! On one hand, I couldn’t wait for maternity leave to begin. As stress at work will be gone and I will finally have some time off to prepare for birth and do things I love.
On the other hand, it was giving me a bit of identity crisis. I was like talking to myself, am I going to not be the professional job title at work anymore? (or at least for the 18 month maternity leave) Is it true that I am going to have a 180 degree change in my career to take on the MOM role?
Thankfully the Lord put a few sisters in Christ who are on the mom journey around me. Not only did they give us baby stuff and advice, but their selflessness serving attitude, creativity and devoted lives are so inspiring. Now I can start to embrace this change. Feeling blessed to be able to pour my love and devotion to our growing family!
So far I have been keeping myself busy while waiting for baby to arrive. I started a craft project to create high contrast cards from felt, did some batch cooking and baking to store in freezer and organized around the house. Of course working out is still part of my routine. At this point I just stuck to this prenatal pilates video that makes me feel good every time!
What I cook and eat in third trimester
As a food blogger, of course we are not leaving food out of this trimester’s diary!
All about efficient cooking!
Since standing for long in the kitchen is not possible anymore, I started to pay extra attention in making cooking more efficient. To be efficient in time, meat for stir fry were already precut and froze in individual meal portions. This makes only vegetable left for chopping to make a quick stir fry!
Meat pre cut for stir fry and freeze in small portion 
Japchae with pork belly stir fry pieces 
Chicken breast cut in strips for stirfry
To conserve my energy, I also love to use my slow cooker in this season of life. Slow cooking means I only need to chop my veggies in big chunks, cooking in big batches and no need to stand in front of the stove! That is a big win-win!
Slow cooked chicken wings with root veggies 
Pork belly in slow cooker for stewing 
Taiwanese five spice stewed pork belly on rice noodle
Taking breaks from cooking too!
Although I prefer cooking at home with the best nutritious, organic, antibiotic & growth hormone-free ingredients, eating out is still a nice treat!
I admit that I do miss sashimi during this pregnancy, but I am glad that there are still so many comfort food options that I could enjoy! Here are some of our favorites!
Shanghainese meal with rice cake in soup and briased pork belly 
Japanese all you can eat 
Dim sum on a girls date
See you at the birth story post!
I didn’t expect this to be such a long-winded post but thank you for reading it through. At the time of typing this, baby is right at 41 weeks so 7 days overdue! We are on the home stretch and can’t wait to hold our bundle of joy in our arms soon!!