The First Trimester

As I've been going through the first trimester, I've had a lot of questions about what is "normal" and what to expect. I've heard lots of great advice, but I've also heard of  "I don't remember..." and "it's different for every person." So, I want to keep a log of my experiences so that I will be able to look back and see what this first pregnancy was like and what my "normal" is.

The morning sickness started around week 7. At risk of showing what a nerd I am, I must confess that I was actually excited the first morning I threw up. Not that throwing up is a pleasant experience, but it made the pregnancy feel more real! I rushed to work and found Josh and excitedly told him...he just laughed at me.

Obviously, the novelty of throwing up quickly wore off. Morning sickness was a common and strong symptom for me. I could pretty much expect to wretch every single morning while getting ready for work. The nausea would usually be off and on throughout the day...I didn't really have a "safe" period. There was a time at work where I had to quickly run for a trashcan (I thought I had some privacy, but found one of my co-workers standing rigidly and awkwardly at the bottom of the stairs kindly trying to pretend like he didn't hear anything...) and had to make use of the parking lot a couple times as well. On one of the most intense days, I had to leave church and my mom had to pull over 3 or 4 times on the way home. While morning sickness could definitely be miserable, it was always bearable because I knew it meant my baby was growing healthy and strong. Fortunately for me, it got exponentially better a few weeks into the second trimester.

One symptom that gave me a fair amount of grief was cramping. I mentioned in a previous post that I didn't think I was pregnant to begin with because I had already had some cramping. This continued throughout most of the first trimester and even some in the second. Sometimes it was fairly strong, which would send me to calling the doctor in a panic. One day I even had to go home from work and lay down because of their intensity. These cramps absolutely terrified me, but each time the doctor assured me it was just my uterus stretching to make room for the baby.

There are 2 symptoms I will be brief on, for delicacy's sake. The first is constipation. My gosh, why don't people warn you about this?! You always have people preparing you for morning sickness, but no one mentions constipation. And yet every person I asked about it would say they had it, too, and that it was terrible! Anyways, this was a very unpleasant and pervasive symptom. The second symptom was...growth. Within just a very few weeks, I became way more top heavy. As a matter of fact, when we announced to people we were pregnant (at 13 weeks) people mentioned they hadn't noticed my stomach getting bigger but that they did notice my other...area. Great.

I did start to get a bump pretty quickly. It was more noticeable to me than anybody else- obviously, because I know my own body and I could feel my clothes getting tighter. I became quite proud of my little belly and I'm probably one of the few girls that didn't like it when people would say "you don't even look pregnant!" To me, my bump was a mark of progress and saying that I didn't look pregnant took my progress away. (For the record, I wasn't offended...I just liked my bump!) Despite the growth, I actually didn't gain any weight in the first trimester.

My fatigue picked up, too. I got increasingly tired as the weeks went by and would require more and more sleep. There were days I literally felt like I was going to fall asleep on my desk and would have to scrounge up change for the vending machine to get a Snickers bar that would provide me with a sugar-buzz to get through the day.

As far as cravings go, I didn't really have many during the first trimester. There was a period where I wanted Prosser's BBQ all the time, but we couldn't feed the fetish because of expense, so it eventually went away. For the most part, I just had food aversions. I felt nauseous so often that I never really wanted to eat anything but knew that in reality I would feel better if I did. After a couple of "coming back up" incidents, I did have to lay off the ground beef for awhile. Food doesn't stay appealing very long if you can't keep it down...

Having to deal with fertility issues was undesirable (to say the least), but I guess one perk was getting extra ultrasounds! The fertility center had me go in for my first ultrasound at 7 weeks...

And we got another one at 9 weeks...
(Isn't the amount of growth and change between week 7 and week 9 amazing? Seriously, pregnancy and bringing babies into the world are such miracles!)

And then one when we were handed over to our regular OB at 12 weeks...

One thing that was crazy and frustrating was that the little baby was in there and was already a boy or girl but we couldn't know yet what it was! Waiting to find out is so hard...

Next up, the second trimester!

Our Third Anniversary

Three years of being married to Josh has been wonderful! Through all of our difficult times, he is always a rock for me. I've never met someone so patient and understanding and am so grateful that we found each other.

With expenses being a little tight, we kept our anniversary very low key.  We went and ate at one of our favorite restaurants, Carrabbas, and then spent some time walking around the Market Common. The rest of our evening consisted of watching the new Sherlock Holmes on Redbox and me throwing up everything I ate at Carrabbas because of my morning sickness (but I have to say, it was worth it).

On our next anniversary, we'll be a family of three!

Blessed

After:

• 2 years
• 10 rounds of Clomid
• Dozens of blood draws and lab work
• An HSG test
• 1 laparoscopic surgery
• Several ultrasounds
• Many, many Follistem injections
• 2 HCG "trigger" shots
• Weeks of progesterone pills
• 2.5 IUI (intra-uterine insemination) cycles
• Thousands of tears
• Hundreds of prayers

We finally got to see this:

It was quite the morning, I assure you. The fertility center had given me a date to take the test earlier in the week (it has to be taken a certain number of days after the IUI or you can get a false positive from the HCG shot), but I knew I couldn't take it on a work day. If it came out negative, I knew I would be a mess and wouldn't be able to go into work- and I was preparing myself that it would be negative because I'd had a lot of cramping. 

I woke up the morning of June 16th and really needed to use the bathroom but was way too terrified to go because that meant taking the test. So I laid there until Josh finally convinced me to get it over with. I took the test, put it down without looking at it, and left the bathroom. When the 2 minutes were up, I made Josh go in. To be perfectly honest, I was already crying and mourning a negative result. When Josh went to check the test there were several moments of silence, which I took to mean that it was negative and he didn't know how to tell me. But then he finally said "What does it mean if there is a really faint line?" 

The next few minutes were chaos, in which I became increasingly frustrated as I tried to call my mom, sister and doctor to find out what a faint line meant and no one was answering! I thought I'd heard it meant "pregnant", but I didn't want to get my hopes up and then be let down. We finally got a hold of mom, and she thought the same thing, but didn't want to tell me anything definitive for the same reason. So I became increasingly ballistic while Josh and Mom searched the internet for answers. Finally, Lindsey, Mom, Josh and I came to the same conclusion: it was positive!

After waiting for so long, it was difficult for me to accept it completely. That meant taking another pregnancy test, which came out as a definitive positive. The next day, we drove to Charleston and a blood test at the fertility center confirmed it- Baby Benson is due February 19, 2013!

Words cannot express how incredibly grateful and blessed we feel. All I've wanted for so long was to be a mother (I went to career day in kindergarten dressed as a mom...) and it was heart-breaking that it wasn't happening for us and I wasn't sure if it ever would. Heavenly Father opened so many doors to make it possible for us to have incredibly supportive family and friends, find great doctors and nurses, have flexible work schedules so we could go to all of our many appointments, and afford fertility treatments. We are beyond grateful for this little baby Heavenly Father has blessed us with and know that He not only answered our prayers but was mindful of us and our struggles all along.

Our fertility problems were something that we have been incredibly private about for the last couple of years, mostly because it was just too difficult to talk about. I debated whether or not to open up about it now, but decided to for 2 reasons: first, because this blog is for our family history and this has been a huge part of our lives that needs to be recorded. Secondly, because Josh and I feel that a big reason we have had to experience this was so that we could learn how to support and uplift others who may be experiencing a similar situation. If we can help comfort anyone going through this trial, then losing a little bit of privacy is more than worth it.

We can't wait to meet this little baby!