27 Weeks along, with just a maximum of 11 left to go. When the remaining weeks are down to the single digits, I’m probably going to start panicking. As of now, I’m cool. Staying cool. That’s right. Reeeeeeeeal coooool.

Serious question, though: is it the second or the third trimester?! No one seems to know. My Ovia app says second, to my great dismay. I had been hoping to open it up Sunday morning and have it excitedly bleat “THIRD TRIMESTER” at me, but it did not. My secondary (and lesser) app (The Bump) says nothing on the subject. Amalah’s Alphamom pregnancy calendar says third trimester. I would like to go with Amalah on this one, but I am going to wait until next week to make it official. I sure feel like I’m in the third, though, boy howdy.

The Babies are the Size of: Two bunches of bananas. They’re nice and big, all righty, and getting bigger. Just the way we like it! I bought myself a big bunch of bananas this week, as a matter of fact, and have been eating one every morning. Should I, or should I not be eating the fruit/vegetable from the current week’s size comparison? Too creepy?

How I’m Doing: I had a really hard day Monday. I was having strong, more painful than usual Braxton Hicks contractions all day long, but they were especially bad anytime I was standing or walking, and they took a long time to calm down when I was resting. On the walk to my car from my office at the end of the day, which takes me about 10-12 minutes, I had at least three big ones, for example. It was pretty unsettling. When I got to the car, I called my OB’s office and they wanted me to come in, but couldn’t get me an appointment until much later in the afternoon, and it was with another doctor in the practice. I went home and lay down in bed and the BH slowed down, which was a relief, but when I got back up to get ready to head to the doctor’s office, they started back up again and stayed really regular at every 10 minutes. The doctor checked my cervix, found it wasn’t dilated, and basically sent me on my way. Some of the things he said: we could tell I wasn’t in pre-term labor right then, but couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t go into it later. Nothing has really been proven to prevent pre-term labor, even bed rest. I should be reasonable about my activity level. Okay then. I guess that’s as reassuring as he could be.

I spent the next day working from home (as usual on Tuesdays) and barely got up from the couch. I didn’t do any of the household stuff I had planned/needed to do, just stayed there with my laptop doing course prep and grading. I felt MUCH better and barely had any contractions all day (until after dinner when I was helping clean up and do dishes, which I won’t be doing again).

Today, I was back on campus and in the classroom. I really wanted to avoid another day like Monday, so I found out about the school’s campus shuttle for people who have mobility problems or accessibility issues, which I can take from the parking deck to my building and back every day. I also stayed seated for most of my class time and minimized walking around the building. On a normal teaching day, I have been getting 8-9K steps, but today I am only at 4K so far and I feel MUCH better. I still have BH when I’m up and walking around, but they’ve been minimal/infrequent and quick to settle down — basically just like how I was feeling last week.

I was relieved to feel so much better after a day of inactivity, but it’s also hard to deal with psychologically. I went from running, to not being able to run but still walking for exercise, to not being able to walk but still getting around at work, to taking the shuttle at work but still being able to teach. Let’s hope we don’t go to the next logical step in that progression.

WHEW. Sorry for the extensive exploration of the topic. I guess it’s just that I knew things would be really hard when November rolled around — and December, if we make it there–, but I wasn’t expecting October to be this hard. And, hey, it’s not even October yet.

Movement: The babies are going to TOWN all the time now. During class today, I could look down and see my belly moving super clearly. I wonder if my students noticed?

Eating: I feel like I am not eating nearly as much now as I was in the beginning. I’m still probably getting a lot of calories in but I just can’t eat a lot of volume at the moment. CW is making cheeseburgers for dinner tonight, though, so that should be pretty great. I may have to eat half of it now and half of it in an hour or two, though. Squashed stomach problems.

Coming Up: BFF Claire is coming to town this weekend and we are having the baby shower on Saturday! I never had a wedding shower and we didn’t use a wedding registry, so this whole idea of registering for things and then having people just…buy them for us is kind of novel. A little weird, a little fun, very wonderful. But more on that later!