Grocery shopping presents new challenges in the third trimester. Walking up and down each aisle is a little more tiring that usual. Pelvic pain can make a shopping trip miserable. Reaching items on the top shelf or squatting down to pick up items off the bottom shelf becomes embarrassingly difficult. Lifting a case of water seems impossible. And just when you think you’ve gotten through the worst part, you arrive at the checkout and realize you can’t reach the items in the bottom of the cart because your belly is in the way! The solution? Enlist a shopping buddy. Call your girlfriend and plan your trips together. Here are three reasons you should:
1. Lifting Heavy Items/Shopping Bags
First of all, you shouldn’t be lifting heavy items when you are pregnant. If you can’t find someone to assist you on your shopping trip, make sure you ask the person packing up your groceries to lightly fill each bag. If you haven’t invested in reusable shopping bags yet, now is the time. If you need to buy something like fireplace logs (those boxes are really heavy), ask a store employee to load them into your cart and help you load them into your car afterward. Some grocery stores offer drive up service. If your grocery store offers it, take advantage of it! That’s what they are there to do!
2. Reaching High Items/Really Low Items
Don’t risk slipping on slippery tile while standing on your tip toes to reach a can on the top shelf. If you have someone with you, you can have them grab everything on the top and bottom shelves while you shop for everything else. It will cut your time in half and will save you the hassle.
3. Unloading the cart
It happened to me. I was unloading my shopping cart and all I had left were the soup cans that had rolled back underneath the child seat. In my last month of pregnancy, my belly was pushing into the rim of the cart before my fingertips could touch the cans. Fortunately a friendly fellow shopper was there to help me unload the rest of my groceries onto the conveyor. Of course, another solution is to use a shopping basket rather than a cart if you plan on only getting a few things. (Just don’t overfill the basket!)
Another tip for grocery shopping while pregnant is to time your trip so you get home when your spouse or another family member will be there to help you unload your car and put the groceries away. I know that I would often come home completely exhausted and the last thing I wanted to do was continue to walk back and forth between the trunk and the pantry, and then have to bend over repeatedly while putting everything away. It’s extremely tiring!