38 weeks - exhausted

[ploddingalong2023]

Just trying to see if this is normal as this is my 2nd pregnancy and with my 1st, I didn’t feel like this at all.

I am 38 + 3 right now and for the last week I have been just exhausted
I usually do quite well as a person with little sleep / broken sleep so I am really surprised how tired I am feeling.

I am getting 7-9 hours per night (with wake up for pee / heartburn in between) but by around 10-11am - I NEED a nap not just ahh yawn tired like my eyes won’t physically stay open.

today I’ve been up at 6.30 - nap at 10.30 - and now 2.30 I can’t keep my eyes open again. It’s so unlike me and I didn’t feel like this with my 1st - I had plenty of energy right to the end.

am I overthinking it that it could be for a bad reason or is this just normal and I was lucky with my 1st??

thanks!!

How do you feel after a sleep? Are you able to do normal activities?

I've just had baby 2 and developed extreme fatigue at 35 weeks. I had been needing a lie didn't for comfort each afternoon just to get him to wiggle down from under my ribs but starting at 35 weeks more severe tiredness kicked in and within a few days I woke from naps as tired as when I went to sleep and then got to the point where I was only awake a few hours a day. After a few days I ended up maternity triage with it and being admitted for observations. They ran some blood tests checking my iron and b12 levels which were normal. They ran some other checks too and eventually decided it was probably mostly due to a liver condition I had developed combined with 3rd trimester combined with low appetite due to being 8 months pregnant and the liver condition and not having many hours awake a day in order to actually get food into me! I tried to eat whenever awake and focus on calorie and energy rich foods. For various reasons they decided I needed an induction at

If you are tired but able to go about daily life. I'd give your midwife/GP a call and see if you can get some bloods taken for next week.
If you aren't awaking rested after sleep and it's limiting what you can do it might be worth giving the maternity triage a call and seeing if you can be seen over the weekend for some tests. There's normal exhaustion, there's exhaustion that's got a relatively simple cause/fix and there's the outside chance that it's something more out of the ordinary. Some blood tests should help identify where you are most probably somewhere between the first and second scenario but it doesn't hurt to have a once over