The First Trimester

Alright Yummy Mummies, jump into your hot-tub-time-machines, and let me take you back to my first trimester...

The First Trimester:

To be completely honest (and other newly pregnant moms, please don’t hate me) I had a pretty great first trimester. I only vomited once, and I was actually proud of it. “Guess what honey? I just puked!” It felt like a rite of passage. I took a big red pen and checked “vomiting” off of my to-be-expected-during-the-first-trimester list. I’m joking, I didn’t have a list (not a physical one anyway) but it did feel good to finally understand what it felt like to vomit due to being pregnant, and not from having the stomach flu or being hung-over. It was a 100% authentic “I’m growing a human being” related puking incident. And damnit, I was proud!

Morning-sickness aside, I found the first trimester to be pretty surreal. For the most part, I hadn’t told anyone that I was pregnant yet. Except my husband. And my best-friend. And my parents. And my husband’s parents. And my other five closest girlfriends...

Okay, admittedly, it was hard to keep it a secret. But I had to, I just had to. What if something went wrong? What if I had to un-tell people about the baby? That would just be awful...

So every day, I woke up in a state of disbelief. “Am I still pregnant?” I’d poke my boobs really hard. Were they still sore? Did that still hurt? What about that? Or that? My husband would walk in on my boob-poking sessions and ask, “What are you doing?” 

“I’m making sure I’m still pregnant.” Pff. Clearly! 

Before having my first ultrasound, I found it very hard to believe that a little mini-me was being created. It blew my mind. I’d read about being seven weeks pregnant “The heart and brain are becoming more complicated, the eyelid folds are forming, the tip of the nose is present...” and I would just stare at my belly in awe. I would google images of what a baby looks like at 9, 10, and 11 weeks pregnant just so I could better imagine what was happening.  I derived a lot of pleasure from the various food size comparisons you can find online “My baby is now the size of a raspberry!” 

There was so much going on in my body, but I couldn’t feel it, I couldn’t see it, I just had to believe in it. I guess that’s what it means to have faith... (Cue George Michael’s “Faith” chorus)

Though to be honest, it wasn’t until our first ultra-sound at nine weeks that I could breathe a sigh of relief. I saw our big headed alien baby on the monitor, and my eyes filled with tears. You could see the heart beating, and the outline of its spine. It was now the size of a green olive and I was already head-over-heels. And I don’t even like olives normally. But man-oh-man did I ever LOVE this one!

This love carried me through the first trimester, as I excitedly anticipated the next landmark stage of pregnancy: feeling the baby move!

** After my last post, I had many friends on Facebook share with me their "how I found out I was pregnant" stories.  So I'll ask you ladies—how did you find your first trimester? Were you really sick? Did you even know you were pregnant? I'd love to hear what your experiences have been like!

xx

Jen