First Trimester Recap

Now that I am just shy of 20 weeks pregnant, I wanted to take a moment to write up my first trimester recap.  On one hand, I’m sure it’s something I will want to be able to look back on and read, but also, I have been getting different questions about what the first trimester was like for me this time around.  So in this post I’ll be chatting about what my symptoms were like and how I was able to get through the notoriously difficult first trimester!

Back to the Beginning

We found out we were pregnant on December 31st, 2021.  We had been trying, so this was about 5 or so days before my missed period.  I took one of the First Response Early Result tests (I got my positive with Emma 6 days before using those tests) and it was positive!  We were so happy.  I had a feeling it was going to be positive…I can’t really explain it but I just had this feeling all throughout Christmas week (during the two week wait) that it was going to be.  I kept getting weird deja vu of feelings I had with Emma.  I also had little signs popping up.  First, I shared a picture of a Christmas cookie I made that was supposed to be a snowman, but apparently it came out looking a little different.  I wish I had taken a picture of the cookie before I ate it lol. I got a handful of messages saying it looked like a pregnant Mary praying.

Then, I also took one of those word finder games to find your “words of the year” for the upcoming year and the first 3 I saw were labor, triumph, and happy.  It may seem silly but it felt like it was just backing up what I was feeling.

So just little signs like that.  And then we got our positive test a week later.

Early Symptoms

Mainly at first my early symptoms were extreme fatigue and then loss of appetite/food aversions/nausea happened a few weeks later.  I also had some backaches and cramps around week 8-9 that was so painful.  I think it was my hips already shifting to get wider because it was very similar to the pain I had in my hips after I gave birth to Emma of my hips going back down.  But I basically could not eat anything because NOTHING sounded appetizing.  The only thing I could eat was some plain oatmeal in the morning but the rest of the day was a struggle.  Sometimes a handful of tortilla chips was all I could manage.  I lost weight in the first trimester just because I couldn’t eat a thing, but luckily I never actually threw up from the nausea.  Gagged several times though, lol.

Also the fatigue was so extreme and it’s even harder when you have a toddler to chase around and care for!  I did a lot of laying on the couch in the playroom while she played or watched TV.  I was just trying to survive!  Some days were worse than others though and we got through it.

Working Out

One question I get a lot is about working out and what I did in the first trimester.  With Emma, I really didn’t miss a beat with my workouts.  I had fatigue with her but it wasn’t as intense as this time around.  I could barely do anything I just had zero energy.  I’d try to just get on the treadmill and watch something on Netflix, but I was often struggling to even WALK at speed 3.0.  Some days I was able to throw in 15-20 minutes of light strength training – I tried to keep up with my Besst Workouts schedule as much as possible – but I certainly took lots more rest days than usual which was fine with me.  Mentally I was not, and I’m still not, in a place (following the miscarriage) that I felt comfortable pushing my body whatsoever.  Since some of the Besst Workouts Weekly Workouts are a little more intense than I’d want to do in the first trimester, I swapped in workouts from my Pregnancy Fitness Guide since they are all designed to be pregnancy safe and overall more gentle on your body.

But the bottom line and what I wanted to stress to all the other women who would message me asking me how I worked out in the first trimester, the answer is that sometimes I didn’t!  And that is MORE than okay! One big motivator for me to at least try when I felt okay was that I knew from my pregnancy with Emma that usually working out in the morning helped me feel less sick the rest of the day.  So even if it was just 15-20 minutes, I tried my best to move my body.  But there absolutely were weeks maybe I only made it out there 2-3 times (instead of my usual 6 days a week) and I was just fine with that.  Your body is doing SO MUCH those early weeks of pregnancy.  It’s fine to take it easy and rest.  The energy will come back in the second trimester and you can move a little more then.  Just focus on taking the best care of yourself that you can and don’t stress about not working out if you’re not able to.

I truthfully didn’t start feeling that energy more until week 16, a few weeks into the second trimester, but everyone is different.  The good news is that I finally did turn that corner and start feeling good again (even though as I type this at almost 20 weeks I am having a major resurgence of that exhaustion!).  I know the symptoms will come and go and fluctuate, and I’m just happy to be along for the ride.

Mindset

I just briefly mentioned this but my mindset this pregnancy has been much different just thanks to the experience with the loss last year. I am definitely more anxious and worried this time than I was with Emma (what blissful ignorance that pregnancy was!) but I have been doing my best to not let it take over my pregnancy and ruin my experience. One thing I had with her was a Baby Doppler fetal heart rate monitor and so I started using that as early as I possibly could (it recommends no earlier than 12 weeks but I think I used it just shy of 12 and I was able to find the heartbeat).  And I have used it every single day since then because it helped my anxiety so much, that is until this morning.  I am feeling so many more kicks and flutters now that when I woke up this morning to a dance party in my uterus for 15 minutes I didn’t feel the need to listen to her heart beat, and I am so grateful for that.  Some doctors will not recommend using a fetal doppler because if you can’t find the heart beat it might cause you undue stress when everything is fine.  I’d just ask your doctor if you are curious about getting one for at-home use.

I loved my experience with Emma’s pregnancy and I want to be able to say the same thing this time.  It certainly gets a little easier as time goes on, and the first trimester specifically is such a challenge when you worry about every little thing.  I still do my morning prayer time and Bible study, which helps me maintain my faith that God has this under control, and that I can let go of the worry.  It’s not in my hands, it’s in His…and there is no better place for it to be.

I hope this first trimester recap post has been helpful and enlightening about my personal first trimester experience…if you have any questions please feel free to leave them in the comments below!

xo,

Bess