An Honest Look at the First Trimester

I'm 6.5 weeks away from my due date, and it seems crazy that this journey is almost over. It also seems crazy that I still have to do this for 6.5 more weeks, and that I'll only keep getting more humungous. Now that I'm closer to postpartum life, I'm starting to compile a document of "advice" to pass along to other pregnant friends in the future. I received one of these multi-paged tidbits of wisdom early on in my pregnancy, and it was great to see an honest look at what pregnancy is like. That being said, everyone's pregnancy is different, so I've been writing my own version since the beginning.

For the sake of this blog, I'm breaking it down by trimesters and scaling it down a bit. With that, here is the...

First Trimester

Yay! You're pregnant(holyshit)! Now what(holyshit!)? Well, sister, enjoy the this whirlwind feeling right now because you probably have a shitstorm coming your way.

BODY

The things that happened to my body were far beyond what I would have thought of. I knew about the nausea, the weight gain, I had seen people’s swollen feet and ankles, but I had no idea what my body was about to go through. The changes to my body in the first trimester weren't visible and dramatic like the second and third, but boy did I feel it.

Nausea – Nausea is flat out the worst symptom to deal with, in my opinion. I had persistent nausea for my first trimester; it eventually eased up around 16 weeks. After that I had a really sensitive gag reflex on and off. My stomach didn’t necessarily feel upset, but for some reason my gag reflex could be trigged by something as simple as clearing my throat. I spent many car rides looking at the car door handle, wondering how fast I could grab it if suddenly I did vomit. For me, it was not morning sickness. It was pretty much all damn day sickness. Things like preggie pops, ginger chews, PsiBands, and never letting my stomach be totally empty did help, but a lot of it was rest and mind over matter. I WILL NOT vomit in public... I WILL NOT vomit in public...

Fatigue – The tiredness you experience while pregnant is like no other. The worst days make it feel like it’s impossible to get out of bed. It's like having the flu almost every day.

Pimples/blotchiness – Ah, puberty. It was the last time I had really terrible skin. Now here I am working to bring a child into the world and suddenly I have pimples again. I didn’t suffer from acne for long (or even that badly), but I suddenly got super blotchy skin. It was the first time since high school I found myself in the makeup aisle of Target texting a girlfriend asking how the hell to choose a foundation. 

Headaches – This was the bane on my freakin’ existence for a lot of my first trimester. First of all, I was/am a caffeine addict and going cold turkey was absolutely miserable. It resulted in a steady, pounding, unrelenting migraine for about a week straight. I suffered from bad, bad headaches about 2-3 times a week throughout my first trimester, the kind where any light, movement, or sound makes you nauseous. I eventually found some sense and added some caffeine back into my diet, and it helped a lot. 

Constipation – I’m a firm believer that if you ain’t poopin, you ain’t livin’. When I have stretches of feeling unwell while pregnant, I stop and think, “when is the last time I pooped?” If the answer is more than two days, I start to blame the constipation. I didn’t realize how much digestion would slow down in pregnancy.  I kind of lost sense of time in my first trimester, I didn't work for almost two months and I spent most of my time on the couch. I'll save my worst horror stories for the "unedited" version of this list. It was brutal, but it could have been worse (ah, the pregnancy mantra). All you need to know is that I actually Googled "how long can you go without pooping before you die?". 

Constantly Peeing - I got up at 3am every single night to pee. It's annoying, but I can almost guarantee that you will be asleep within 7 seconds of laying back down because you're so tired. It's actually a good opportunity to eat a small snack so you don't wake up with an empty, extra-nauseous stomach. 

MIND

Hormones - You thought your PMS mood swings were bad? Say hello to the worst case of PMS you've ever had that doesn't end. You're going from being absolutely enthralled and amazed at this mind-blowing process going on in your body right now, to wanting to cry, throw up, cry more, scream... all in about 10 minutes, pretty much all day. Your hormones go freakin' buckwild in the first trimester as your body develops the placenta. What can you do about it? Whatever you've been doing to mitigate menstrual/general mood swings your whole life, and hope for the best. 

Insanely vivid dreams – Had I known that weird, vivid dreams were a pregnancy symptom, I would have suspected I was pregnant before I peed on the stick. I had extremely intricate, bizarre dreams every night my entire first trimester.

Pure wonder and joy - This is probably just the upswing of your mood roller coaster, but hey, enjoy it while it's there. It all seems metaphorical in the first trimester, because you can't feel the baby yet and it's so damn small that it seems impossible. That won't stop you from having those amazing moments every time you look up "how big is the baby at 7 weeks?" Answer: the size of a blueberry.

Absolute terror - The Internet is your best friend and worst enemy. It can reassure you that your chances of miscarrying are very low after a certain point, and it will also remind you that more people miscarry than you realize. I became obsessed with reading every article I could about miscarriage. I followed the May2016 due date board on an app I used and read every post of another poor woman that lost her pregnancy. Being pregnant is amazing, but it's also really scary. The stupid Internet doesn't help.

Looking back on it now...

I tried to find the silver lining of this period, and literally the only thing was finding out I was pregnant. The rest, for me, sucked. I was downright miserable almost every moment of the day. My emotions were out of control, I didn’t feel like myself, I was constantly on the verge of vomiting, etc. I wanted people to pity me, I pitied myself when no one else was pitying me, and when people were around I wished they were gone. The only thing I enjoyed was watching the Ellen Degeneres show every weekday. I wish I could paint a prettier picture, but there isn’t one to paint. I would wake up every morning with my stomach lurching up until 15 weeks. I finally stopped taking Unisom & B6 for nausea around 25 weeks. I thank the high heavens I wasn’t expected to be a functional human for a good chunk of this time. It’s just one of those things you have to muscle through, because eventually it does get better. I've really "sold" this whole amazing pregnancy thing, huh?