First Trimester Update

Today’s post is a recap on how my first trimester went (spoiler alert: lots of throwing up, migraines and not leaving my bed) week by week with details on symptoms, food cravings, body changes and more! I went back and forth on how to structure this post since there’s honestly so much to discuss and this is basically my diary, so we’ll use this trimester as a test round. Anyway, let’s get into it!

How far along are you now?
Today I’m 15 weeks and 3 days!

First pregnancy symptoms?
Sore and swollen boobs, headaches, a little irritable, weird vivid dreams (still getting these all the time), night sweats, hot and cold, sweaty in general, sweaty/stinky feet, increased hair growth (could be strictly from prenatals), more oily hair. A few weeks in, I was super tired all the time, had no energy, was very out of breath, could feel my heart racing faster all the time, felt anxious for no reason. My belly started to feel hard on the inside and I could feel it stretching.

Weight gain?
I’m behind on this since I lost weight from being so sick (which made me insecure about the way I looked), but I’ve gained back about 4 lbs. My doctor wants me to gain about a pound a week, so bring on the food!

I will say though that my body started changing right away! My boobs pretty much doubled in size and I have a lot more hair growth now. For whatever reason, I never really had armpit hair before, but I do now! I first noticed by belly popping out at around 12 weeks, which is when I started taking my bump progression pictures.

Maternity clothes?
Not yet, but all I want to wear are loose, flowy dresses with no bra. Ever. I bought some clothes that will hopefully help accommodate my growing bump, though I probably didn’t buy everything as big as I should have.

Sleep?
I’m not sleeping as soundly as I normally would and I often wake up achy. I was waking up with a dull headache every morning for a while, but that has stopped.

Best moment this week?
Getting to see my bump in different outfits! I love it.

Weird pregnancy moment?
My belly button popping out already!

Baby movement?
My doctor asked if I’d been feeling it yet at my 14 week appointment and said I should be soon if I haven’t already, and I’m not sure if I have! Google says it could feel similar to gas bubbles and I feel those most evenings when I crawl into bed — so maybe!

Food cravings?
Nothing as strongly as I expected I would, but I’d say milk and apples lately. Finding food I could eat at all in the beginning was tough since I was so sick. I was throwing up pretty much everything I ate, but at my sickest, my go-to’s were carbs (toast, white rice), ginger ale, Goldfish, plain pancakes, potato soup, potatoes, cooked veggies, pickles, vanilla Boost, milk and Gatorade.

Starting around 12 weeks, I’ve been eating just like I normally would when I wasn’t pregnant, which has been so nice! I’m still a bit nauseous in the morning (and sometimes at bedtime), which makes it tough to eat breakfast — but I’m working on it!

Anything making you queasy?
Nothing really triggers it, I just get queasy!

Favorite products?
For stretch marks, I started applying these two products every night at 13 weeks. That’s technically my second trimester, but I wanted to include it here since I bought them in my first trimester. I feel like stretch marks are mostly genetic and my mom had them pretty bad, so we’ll see if this helps prevent them at all.

• Earth Mama Belly Butter
• Bio Oil

As for prenatals, I’ve tried a couple different gummy ones and don’t love either. If you have any recommendations, please let me know!

Gender?
We’ll find out in 3 weeks! Justin is confident it’s a girl for some reason. I thought maybe boy in the beginning, but now I have absolutely no clue.

Something you’re looking forward to?
Our next ultrasound for sure and decorating the nursery once we know the gender! We rearranged our rooms this past week so our old guest room will be the baby’s room and the office is now and office/guest room. As for ultrasounds, we haven’t had one since 6 weeks and the baby didn’t look like a baby then, so we’re excited to see its little body and features! We have also yet to see and hear the baby’s heartbeat at the same time — I’ve only heard it twice on the handheld machine (neither time Justin was allowed in because of the pandemic, but he was able to go to the first couple appointments and all the ultrasounds so far).

WEEK BY WEEK

Week 4

The next morning after I got my first positive test, I called my OBGYN and made an appointment. They wanted to see me right away because my last period had been so long ago (January 5-10), we had no clue how far along I was. I could have been anywhere from 4 weeks to 9 weeks. I went in for my first doctor’s appointment on March 11 to do a urine sample, have my blood taken and get all the info. Since my cycles were about 45 days and my last period was over two months prior, they had me do a vaginal ultrasound so they could get an idea of how far along I actually was. Since I had gotten a negative pregnancy test on February 28 and a positive one when I next tested on March 5, I figured I probably wasn’t too far along, but we needed to check to be sure.

Justin and I were very excited about getting an ultrasound since we were fully prepared to not get one at this appointment. I undressed, the tech came in, did her thing, and there it was on the screen. Our baby! Well, just a gestational sac. It was basically a dot and they said my sac was measuring at about 5 weeks (we later found out 4 weeks was more accurate) with an expected due date of early-mid November. It was a cool experience, but more so nerve-wracking because you just never know what they’re going to see and tell you. It was really hard for me to let myself be excited because everything is so touch and go, you truly don’t know what’s going to happen (I truly didn’t let myself be excited until closer to 12 weeks). You can’t hear your baby’s heartbeat until closer to 6 weeks, but it would have been so cool and such a relief to hear that. We scheduled our next appointment for two weeks later and I pretty much spent the rest of the day being totally distracted.

I got a call two days later that my HCG levels came back a bit lower (904) than they anticipated with how far along they thought I was with the ultrasound (4 weeks vs. 5 weeks), so they asked me to come back in that day to do bloodwork again. This sent me into a panic. I changed my day around and got there before they closed to do my test again. I had to wait the entire weekend to find out my results on Monday and it was torture. As I’m sure you can guess, I did an obsessive amount of research that weekend hoping and praying everything would be okay. What I found online made me feel a lot better and the 904 number seemed perfectly fine. I called the doctor first thing Monday morning and they informed me that all was well and that my levels had more than doubled to about 2,500. What a relief!

Week 5

Morning sickness (AKA all day, everyday sickness) started right at 5 weeks and didn’t let up for 6+ weeks. I had nausea, queasiness, headaches/migraines and body weakness. Conveniently, it started on my very first day working remote during quarantine and I’m not kidding when I say I barely got out of bed for 6 weeks. It was pretty awful. It started off being mostly in the evenings, then transitioned into being all day long. I would best describe weeks 5-10 as Bella from Twilight when she’s pregnant and the baby is sucking the life out of her.

Week 6

• I had another doctor’s appointment. I had another vaginal ultrasound and we got to see a heartbeat (above). The heartrate was 126 and she said I was measuring at 6 weeks, 2 days.

Week 7

• I started throwing up this week.

Week 8

• First bought of pregnancy anxiety — that stuff is no joke!
• Threw up pickles (and various other things). Do not recommend.
• TERRIBLE migraine. Couldn’t keep medication or liquids down and almost had to go to the ER.
• UTI scare 🙃

Week 9

• More migraines. The only thing that seemed to help was ice packs on my head sometimes.
• Threw up during a 50+ person Zoom call — thank god for mute & no video!
• Back pain

Week 10

• Had another doctor’s appointment — heart rate was 161!
• More throwing up
• More migraines
• More back pain, but not too bad yet
• More anxiety

Week 11

• Back pain
• Round ligament pain
• Appetite came back

Week 12-13

• Symptoms became more intermittent at this point

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That about sums it up! I could go on forever and ever because pregnancy is such a surreal experience and there’s so much to cover in the first trimester since everything is so new. Regardless of how sick I’ve been, I’m so incredibly happy to be pregnant and it’s truly a dream come true. I’m really grateful to be feeling so much better and having more energy, eating better, and being able to go on walks with Justin and Lucia again. Thanks so much for reading!