If you’ve read my 1st trimester update, you know it was a doozy. Thankfully, about two weeks into my second trimester things got so much easier. I felt less bloated, and finally got past the wicked nausea (food aversion is still alive and well though.) Overall, second trimester was easy and just like a singleton pregnancy.
At my 12 week blood draw to test for abnormalities in the babies, we also checked the gender (how cool they can do that with just a blood test now days, huh) anyway, we found out we were having two GIRLS! We already had both so no matter what the gender, we were going to be happy. During the second trimester of every pregnancy you get an anatomy scan to check on growth and make sure all babies parts are there and measuring to date. Normally it only takes 45 minutes but with twins it took almost 2 hours to do! Mine showed both girls were healthy and measuring great!
All was well, my second trimester was breezing by, and it seemed with each appointment we got more and more excited!
I continued with monthly visits, having ultrasounds at each visit. My doctor said I was a perfect candidate for twins because my 3 previous pregnancies were full term and had zero complications, and the types of twins we were having were the least risky of twins. (There are different ways twins can grow–in separate sacs with separate placentas, in separate sacs with the same placenta, in the same sac with the same placenta… but I will explain that in a different blog.) My twins are considered the less risky because they each have their own sac and their own placenta.
It wasn’t until I was about 22-23 weeks that I could feel the babies really move and I could catch videos of them. People ask me all the time if it’s totally different feeling twins kick from singleton babies, and it’s not really. When you’re pregnant with a single baby you feel them on both sides of your belly just like I do with the twins. With single babies you could feel a foot on one side, and a hand on the other side. With twins even though there’s two in there and I know who is who that’s moving, it still just feels like a single baby does when they stretch out.
The most excitement that came out of my second trimester was when my 24 week ultrasound came around… it showed funneling of my cervix. Which meant that my cervix was dilating (opening) from the inside due to the pressure of two babies. Typically this happens with an incompetent cervix (or a weak cervix.) My doctor didn’t seem too concerned at the time though because my cervix was still thick. They like to see a cervix at 3cm and I was right at the mark. She said if it was any shorter (under 3cm) then she would be more concerned but instead she just told me to come back in 2 weeks for another ultrasound to see if there were any changes. Thankfully, I had my follow up ultrasound which showed my cervix had closed and everything was back to normal! I will say it was quite a scare those two weeks thinking I could of had those babies at any minute! Things can change so quickly when it comes to your body during pregnancy and there’s just no way to know.
It was also during my second trimester that I started seeing a physical therapist. It’s quite common to have back pain during pregnancy, and I’ve suffered with it before with my past two, but it was nothing like this time around. My last pregnancy I wore a belly support band for a few months but it did absolutely nothing for me, so this time I requested to see physical therapy. My pain was worse when I stood for longer than an hour, or sat still for longer than an hour, and I couldn’t lay on my back at all or I felt paralyzed. We treated it like sciatica but we came to the conclusion that because this is my 4th pregnancy, on top of me just having more pressure because of twins, that my body was releasing a hormone pregnant women create called Relaxin a lot sooner than it normally would. Relaxin is produced by ovaries and the placenta to help relax the ligaments in the pelvis to prepare for childbirth. Because my body knew I was pregnant and it had done this before, it was producing these hormones earlier which was causing my joins and muscles to struggle holding all the extra weight. Physical therapy really helped my pain more than anything else I had tried before.
There wasn’t much else that happened during the second trimester. Like I said, it was pretty breezy, and much better than the first trimester.
Come back in a few months to see how the third trimester with twins went!
xo.brit