After this post of my first trimester diary, I will probably continue just posting these updates as trimesters pop up.
As soon as I found out that I was pregnant, I set up a doctor’s appointment with my endocrinologist and my gynecologist. I found a cute way to surprise Devin with the news that evening and I made some goals for myself; you can see the video of me telling Devin here.
My first few days after finding out I was pregnant, I had a lot of anxiety and a lot of energy. I was like “I CAN DO ALL OF THE THINGS RIGHT NOW.” I now know that if I’m lucky enough to feel like this next time, I should spend it preparing our house for my future morning sickness and feeling like a slug.
As I’m writing this, I’m feeling really hopeful because I’ve had two days of feeling pretty good.
We’re going to be entering into A LOT OF information about me and my body. I’m using this post as just what it says, a diary. You’re welcome to read along or just skip.
MY FIRST TRIMESTER DIARY
Morning sickness & Nausea
Weeks 6.5-10
We thought I was about two weeks ahead of time of where I was. I thought I had lucked out of morning sickness, but my Doctors told me to buckle up. Literally the next day, all day nausea, food aversions, motion sickness, and feeling like I was walking on a boat began.
With it, came me needing to wake up 5+ times a night to use the bathroom and sometimes vomit. I’m not sure if this is pregnancy normal for me, or because they have to up my thyroid meds every month, but I had awful stomach issues all night for this whole time period. The nausea sucked, but the hardest part was just not being able to sleep at all because of the bowel issues.
10 weeks
I felt pretty amazing. I was able to start sleeping through the night! I needed this so much because my mental health was starting to really decline with lack of sleep etc.. I woke up on the day I hit 10 weeks and I was able to sleep through the night, eat most of the food I wasn’t able to eat before, but PYSCHE.
11 weeks – 13 weeks
The day we were loading up to go to Arkansas, I got sick all over myself and the car on the way to an ultrasound appointment. When we finished our ultrasound, I began throwing up in the parking lot. I felt awful, but we both started laughing because I told Devin I felt very pregnant that day.
We made our normal one-day trip in two days there and back, and I ended up getting sick about once a hour of our drive. Anytime we had to drive around on our trip, I was sick in the car. I continued to be sick on the drive home until I decided to knock myself out with some Unisom. Since getting home, my nausea was most productive at night when I should be sleeping, but I was nauseous generally all day. I’m just very grateful that I am generally sleeping pretty well though.
Food aversions
I eat like a 5 year old now: think mac and cheese, pasta, yogurt, fruit popsicles, grilled cheese sandwiches, apple sauce, french fries, milk shakes. It is bizarre because I never ate these foods much before and I usually enjoy a large variety of foods; I don’t anymore.
I can’t eat: vegetables (warm or cold), beef, Greek yogurt, sugar-free grape juice, things with strong smells, shrimp (they literally taste like crap now).
Pains
It feels like period pain. Some cramps, sore boobs, and I’ve had a little bit of round ligament pain in my back. It hasn’t been a big deal at all. My neck has actually relaxed quite a bit since I normally have chronic pain and that has been awesome.
Skin
I took my pregnancy test after I realized my face was broken out and covered in fever blisters… super weird for me. I have an occasional break out now, but it hasn’t been bad at all.
I seemed to pop within the last day or two. I woke up with stretch marks on my stomach after a day or two of feeling like my stomach was so tight. I now have a bump.
Weight gain
Nope.
Autoimmune
It took two years to get my levels stable and in a healthy range for pregnancy until the doctor said we could start expanding our family.
Now that we’re there, my levels are double the range they should be in, but everything has been good so far with the baby. I get monthly medication adjustments and blood work done with my endocrinologist.
I’ve had hair loss though; it has been disheartening to lose handfuls of hair with each shower after the hair growth I had coming in. I’m hoping the hair stops falling out and my levels get normal soon. I don’t know if this was because I haven’t been keeping my meds down, which is very likely, or something else. I’ll have lots of questions my next appointment.
Devin
Devin has been awesome. He is normally very sweet, but being pregnant has definitely amped it up. Devin researches the heck out of everything for our baby, reads through all of our pamphlets on pregnancy, watched pregnancy announcement videos for hours to figure out how to announce, and the list keeps going.
Devin has always been very nurturing and loved children, but he is so ready for this gig. Sometimes Devin wants to talk/ joke about when we are pregnant next time, but I am not yet in the mental state to process that 😖😖. However, I have been extremely pampered.
FIRST TRIMESTER DIARY REFLECTIONS
We decided to tell some friends fairly early on because I had a lot of questions on what was normal or not. My ESL students found out fairly early on because I canceled a lot of classes. We told our parents at 11 weeks; I was really having a hard time with traveling and food aversions, and we felt it might be kind of odd that I missed most of the vacation we drove 9 hours to do.
My first trimester was hard, and while I know lots of ladies who have had it much worse, I don’t see why women have to suffer through hard parts of pregnancy (or even miscarriage) alone. Even one of my first times sharing, we were told we shouldn’t be telling people that early; I kind of felt like: why? Everything about a first trimester seems to be so hush, hush and I found it personally kind of isolating. While I understand other people may decide to share whenever they’d like, I felt I would want support more than ever if I miscarried.
There are other things I’ve noticed that are stigmatized. There is a feeling that if you’re honest about your pregnancy that you aren’t grateful for it or it will hurt people’s feelings if they’ve been trying and don’t have one. I’ve tried to be really sensitive in whatever way I can, but I am happy to be pregnant. The reality is that I’ve also been sick and have been for a month; telling the truth about this doesn’t negate how much I want a baby.
This baby was in the works for two years and is very much wanted, but it has not been a glamorous time. I’m looking forward to this second trimester and hope it is a time of less sickness, more productivity, and lots of good growth for baby. It also helps that we’ll find out the gender. 💛