Pregnancy at 26 Weeks Pregnancy Update Pregnancy Tips

Hey beautiful mamas and my beautiful mamas-to-be. In today's video I want to share with you what 24, 25, and 26 weeks of pregnancy is looking like. Coming up. Welcome back to my channel my beautiful friend. If you happen to be new here my name is Nicole. I'm a mommy and about to be a new mama again. I'm a pediatric occupational therapist as well as an intentional parenting coach and this channel is geared to just help you understand child development, intentional parenting, and make your motherhood journey easier, and more fun, and more joy filled. So if that sounds like something you are into do me a favor and hit the subscribe button below. All right so what is unfolding between 24 and 26 weeks of pregnancy? Again everybody's pregnancy is going to look very very different. I know my second time around is much different than with Kai, my eldest son, but for me oh all right guys let's get into it. Sit down, get your tea, get your water. So I am so tired. I am so tired and in combination of being very tired I am also out of breath. So even shooting this video is a workout for me. It's the strangest thing and I know that we will experience shortness of breath especially heading into the third trimester because all of our organs are like literally squished to make room for this growing uterus. But this pregnancy has been especially difficult for me in my lung capacity. I had a really bad cough at the beginning of the year that lasted about four months and so my best guess, I don't know I'm not a doctor, is that I had some scar tissue actually in my lungs that my body was working through. So my lung capacity might have already been compromised before adding a ginormous baby inside of me. So I notice it this pregnancy and if you haven't seen my last pregnancy update I can link it below for you. But essentially I had a heart monitor placed on. The doctors wanted to just make sure that my heart was doing okay pumping blood to the rest of my body. Turns out those results are quote unquote normal. Whatever that means. There was not really a big explanation but apparently I'm okay. It's just a more challenging pregnancy which is fine. Okay so one of the beautiful things that has been happening a lot in this time frame is there are so many pokes and prods. I can sit and watch my belly all day because I just see these little fingers and toes and elbows and knees lifting my belly button or different places of my stomach like all day long and it's the cutest thing. The second you put your hand like right where that little poke is, it disappears. It's like whack-a-mole. It's so cute. It's so fun and it's just amazing to see how life is progressing within you as you do your day to day normal things. It's like wow I am creating life and this life gets stronger. This life becomes more viable and it's just so beautiful. So that's a lot of fun and you're probably noticing that too around this time. Alright so around this time you might have developed what I lovingly refer to as the pregnancy waddle and it's just this kind of like sway. You know if this is not your first pregnancy you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's this sway that you've taken on just to help with like the shifting of where gravity the center of gravity is in your body and how to keep everything upright. It just feels more comfortable to have this like this this waddle like when you walk. So I have that. I'm full-blown prego at this point. It's a lot of fun. I will say this is probably not a news flash to anyone who happens to be at this stage of pregnancy but a pregnancy pillow is non-negotiable at this point. With the back pain, with the aches, with the limited range of motion, and with the general discomfort and the lack of sleep that you're likely taking on at this point in pregnancy, a pregnancy pillow like just helps soften the blow. It's going to give you the most sleep you were gonna get like you could possibly get at this phase. It really helps support my back. I can feel the pull in my mid and lower back if I don't have a pillow or something that's just kind of propped underneath me. And then same thing with the front. It's uncomfortable to actually not have a pillow wedged underneath my stomach to just support the weight that is like pulled over on the sides. So if you don't have a pregnancy pillow, I highly recommend that because it really really helps support your body and it can really help with increasing the amount of sleep that you would otherwise get. Okay so here's my helpful tip for the 24 to 26 week period. I have noticed and I am first to admit my patience is really thin these days. So I have to be extra aware or conscientious about my day and how I am supporting myself in terms of my energy reserve and what I can put out for my family versus what I need to take in. If you push your limits you're gonna push your patience. And so there's an app that really helps ground me and this is something that I do either at night before I go to sleep to sort of just help me release or in the morning to set my tone. And the app is called Beatfulness and it's a biornal beat. And I will show you guys just kind of what this looks like. In the app you can choose from various frequencies basically that will activate different parts of your brain or your body. It's just a really cool app that has some really great tones to put you in a meditative state and really help you just like get into the vibes of whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. Whether it's a good night's sleep, whether it is energy, whether it is peace of mind, they've got something for everyone on this app. So it's something I've been enjoying for a couple of months now and I'd highly recommend it. I'll put the name of the app in the description box below. All right guys, so it is time for the belly shot. This is a 26-ish week belly that I'm showing you now. All right guys, that's it for this video's pregnancy update. I hope you found it entertaining, helpful. Come back. I'll catch you guys in the very next video. Thank you so much for watching. Bye.