So, I’m pregnant. And like I said, it’s crazy, weird, wild and surreal. Can you imagine that this is like, the evolutionary point of having s-e-x? It’s nuts. To be totally upfront, getting pregnant was *knock on wood* not super difficult for me but I’ll get to that another time. For now, I want to dive into the nitty gritty of my first trimester.
The first trimester was definitely much harder than the second for me, but I was lucky to not experience anything too crazy. I know that so many women go through the ringer between getting pregnant, morning sickness that lasts all day – the list goes on. Personally, I was just really f’ing nauseous for a few weeks and beyond exhausted. I also didn’t want to look at anything besides carbs (still don’t, if we’re being honest). Mentally, this was so hard for me. I’m usually super healthy and love a good veggie situation, and for the five months before I got pregnant, I was eating extremely low carb and feeling amazing.
Because it grossed me out to look at food (the idea of cooking meat? vom!!!), each week, my mom would bake me a low carb keto bread (should I post the recipe?) and I’d slather it in Philadelphia cream cheese for breakfast. No joke – we got a three pound tub from Costco that was gone in a month. I can’t even remember what I was eating for lunches – it feels like all I’ve wanted this entire time is bread, dumplings, lots of melty cheese, etc. Brown and beige foods were my BFFs.
For dinner, we were ordering in a lot which is weird for us. I love to cook, but I couldn’t stand the sight of chicken or meat for weeks. I could eat normal food when it was cooked for me but just was absolutely not interested in making it myself.
I also had some weird sleep issues. I’m an actual grandma and had a very specific night routine pre-pregnancy: skincare slathered on, bed by 9ish (because I used to wake up for the gym at 5ish), alarm set and no touching the phone once I’m in bed, fire up an episode of Love Island, The Office or Family Guy, and am out by 10pm.
That schedule went straight out the door during my first trimester. First of all, I was so exhausted and could barely keep my eyes open on my train ride home each night. I’d get home, get onto the couch for an hour and try not to fall asleep (no, seriously – Charlie would have to shake me awake) before we ate, and I’d be in bed by 8pm. Then, I’d end up waking up between 2am-3am every night and staying up for 2 hours doing nothing but staring at the ceiling. Then, my alarm would go off at 5am, and I’d snooze it until 6am. That was fun!
But the second I hit 13 weeks, it was like it had never happened. I mean, duh, I still continue(d) to eat carbs by the truckload, but I can actually stand to eat colorful food and I started sleeping like a baby again. I’ll do a deeper dive into my second trimester in a separate post.
The other thing that came on pretty quickly was the weight gain – I’ll get into this a bit more deeply at some point, because it’s a mindfuck, but I basically was unable to fit into my clothing (i.e. anything that wasn’t leggings) pretty quickly. I wear all of my clothes pretty fitted, and I gained a nice little layer almost immediately, making my jeans a squeeze. Truly, Rent The Runway Unlimited saved my life.
The gym became a thing of the past for me, too – I did a bit of p.volve here and there because I could do it from my living room and it was super low impact. TBH, throughout this entire pregnancy, I haven’t been able to get myself up earlier than 6am which means that even if I realllllyyyy want to, I don’t have time to workout in the AM and I refuse to go to the gym at peak time after work. As someone who has worked out 4-6x a week for the past several years, this was also a massive mindfuck. I mentally knew I’d feel better if I worked out, but my body just was not having it, especially during my first trimester. It also hasn’t helped that it’s the dead of winter – as if that’s not a motivation killer enough on its own.
We actually went to Montana a few weeks where we did an 11+ mile hike and while Charlie would usually be the one needing to take breaks, I was the one struggling instead. I’m used to cruising through hikes, and it was such a change of pace to truly have to slow things down – being pregnant has definitely gotten me more in tune with my body.
Also – we chose to wait to tell everyone I was pregnant until the end of the trimester (we waited to tell our parents until after my 8 week appointment), so you’re kinda just sitting with this information and having to pretend everything is fine and normal in your life even though you may totally feel like shit and are puffing up a bit. I just kept claiming “sweater body” – thank God for winter.
I feel like I wasn’t as outwardly excited when it did come time to tell everyone because I had known for soooo long already. My body works like clockwork and once I was late for a day, I just knew. But it really was so nice to be able to sit with the information and just be super excited as a couple without everyone chiming in for a bit. Our trip to Montana was a few weeks after I found out, and we basically got to chill out and have a totally blissful vacation and no one knew I was pregnant. It was kinda wild.
2 Comments