First Tri, Goodbye!

Dear First Trimester,

You suck.

Your Friend Enemy,

Laurenda

The Symptoms

 

Nausea 

I'll start by saying I had NO early pregnancy symptoms. Sore boobies? Nope. Nausea? Nope. Exhaustion? Not me. I almost begged for symptoms so my pregnancy felt real. It wasn't until week 5 that I noticed a specific change; my appetite was suppressed. This started a day before Thanksgiving, the one time of year you WANT a big appetite. Nothing sounded good, and I could have cared less about eating.

Everything went downhill from there. Around week 6, severe nausea set in. Not just "morning" sickness, but "all-day-long" sickness. This lasted until week 12 (and I still get bouts of it today). The foods I routinely ate looked like garbage on a plate. I couldn't have my daily bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, my grilled chicken salad at lunch, or my quinoa and veggies for dinner. I couldn't even look at avocados. AVOCADOS! They were my favorite. What was happening to me?!

So what did I eat, you ask? Well, I had to stray far far away from my health conscious diet. Carbs were the only thing I could eat without thinking I would heave. I ate peanut butter cheerios, english muffins with cream cheese, spaghetti, saltine crackers with cheddar, and fruit. One day I really wanted Velveeta Shells & Cheese, so my wonderful husband made sure this happened. The pre-pregnancy Laurenda would not have even allowed a box of that processed junk in the house (sorry Velveeta, it's true), but there I was shoveling forkfuls into my mouth. I started drinking Ensure for more calories as I was dropping weight pretty consistantly. The number I saw on the scale was the lowest I'd seen since my Freshmen year of high school. I wasn't eating for pleasure anymore, I was eating for survival.

After 7 weeks of battling nausea and a very skewed diet, I started to get my appetite back. Thank goodness too, because I was dying to feed my body and baby healthful meals. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a little obsessive compulsive about my diet. I'm a health and fitness junky and the aforementioned paragraph describes a person I thought I'd never be.

Exhaustion

Aside from the nausea, exhaustion set in. My 10pm bedtime turned into an 8:30pm bedtime. I wasn't affected during the day, so was able to work without my head nodding. I can't really complain about this symptom, however. Who doesn't like sleep? I often had problems falling asleep before a baby nestled into my belly, so this was very welcomed.

Pregnancy Rhinitis

I didn't know this even existed until I googled it after weeks of random sneezing fits. I only sneeze if I'm getting a bad cold, or my allergies are awakened (usually in the Spring). Since the two pink lines, I started sneezing frequently and out of no where. Sometimes I would wake up at 3am from a dead sleep just to sneeze. From my own research, I found that pregnancy rhinitis is most common in the first trimester and symptoms include sneezing (hey, that's me), runny nose (yup), nasal congestion (have that too) and sinus pressure. This is also a very manageable symptom, but one that came as a surprise!


I can't say the first tri was magical - but I would prefer to be nauseous, sneezing, sleeping, and pregnant...than not carrying at all. I know it will all be worth it in the end!

Baby B at the end of First Tri!