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!