I’m now well into my 2nd trimester, but I still thought it was important to document how my 1st trimester went for other women reading this to get another perspective of what the first 3 months are like. Also, this blog serve as an online diary of sorts to revert back to when I want take a stroll down memory lane. If you haven’t read my previous post: “Well… We’re Having a Baby!” prior to this one, I suggest you start with that… it’s the cuter and more romantic side to pregnancy. This, on the other hand, is the raw side of the story:

As I may have previously mentioned, I decided to take a pregnancy test before I even had the chance to miss my period (2 days early to be exact) and when I got that BFP (big fat positive), I immediately thought that the next morning I would start having all the awful first trimester symptoms (aka morning sickness/ all day sickness). Fortunately, I didn’t, but that’s not to say I never got sick because from time to time I got the occasional queasy-spell, but never did it get in the way of anything unlike some of my family and friends who were sick all day for the whole 9 months (hats off to you ladies). Knock on wood, I haven’t really gotten THAT sick as of yet.

What I did feel though was extreeeemely tired, and not the regular tired where you feel like you didn’t get a good night’s sleep, but the kind of tired that any little task; like doing groceries, making dinner, or even walking up the stairs felt like I had just run a marathon and needed to lie down and rest. For me, that had to be the strangest symptom. Since I’m a very driven and motivated person by nature, when I set my mind to something I’m very go go go, but instead I felt ZERO motivation to do anything. I had gotten a cold/flu twice in this time, probably because I tried pushing myself when my body was clearly trying to get me to take it easy. If you’ve been pregnant or even if you haven’t, imagine already feeling like crap! Now imagine not being able to take anything to make you feel even remotely better… wahhh! I have my tried and true method and remedies and instead I just had to suffer and wait it out (which took 3 times longer) that was torture… ok, a bit dramatic but… well, hormones! Also, funniest symptom of them all… the extreme heightened sense of smell. Like I mean I felt like I had a super power. One time Sean was making coffee one weekend morning, and I literally yelled from upstairs for him to stop whatever he was doing because he was stinking up the house with the smell of wet dog. Thankfully, I got over the coffee aversion fairly quicky, however, the smell of eggs will still set me off.

I consider myself very fortunate to have had the first trimester experience that I did. I didn’t have much of an appetite though which did worry me a bit. I was afraid I wasn’t getting enough nutrition to feed my baby and therefor wouldn’t be growing as it was supposed to. Which brings me to the next point, my worst symptom of all was probably the anxiety. I didn’t vocalize it at all, maybe just to my husband, but even at that not at all to the extent that I was actually feeling it. I was TERRIFIED something horrible would happen to our sweet baby, the thing I longed for most my entire life. I would pray so hard, but oddly enough, inversely, I wouldn’t allow myself to fully believe and connect to this dream of mine. Even after hearing the heartbeat at 10 weeks, as much as it felt more real, I still had a hard time letting myself fall in love with this tiny human. Even after the ultrasound photos and the positive news we received from our DNA testing… I still wouldn’t. It was only a couple days or maybe even weeks after the gender reveal that I allowed myself to finally cry over the realization of how lucky am that I to get the chance to carry this beautiful little nugget.

I’m now at 23 weeks, and getting to feel her wiggle around is the coolest freaking feeling in the world and it’s as if she knows when I need a little reassurance and let’s me know “I’m here Ma!”. So I guess i’ll leave you with the fact that it’s totally normal to feel nervous, anxious and downright scared until that 15 week “safety zone” (and even a little bit after tbh). We feel like if we vocalize how we’re feeling and say it out loud that something bad will happen, but I choose to believe that’s just our maternal instincts kicking in.

Stay tuned for my next post about the gender reveal and my experience finding out.

Thanks for following,

alongwithb.