First Trimester Recap

I’ve always loved reading about the weird and beautiful changes that happen to women’s bodies when they’re pregnant, so now that I’m no longer in the throes of first trimester nausea, I thought I’d document my own.

HOW WE FOUND OUT

I got off of hormonal birth control about three months before we were ready to start trying and started tracking my basal temperature through the Natural Cycles app (I can’t recommend this enough! I learned so much about my body and knew exactly when I’d be ovulating). Every morning, as soon as I woke up, I’d take my temperature and log it in the app. I used it to avoid pregnancy through New Year’s since I knew I’d want to be able to chug champagne at my bachelorette party and all, and once I got back, we switched the app to get-pregnant mode and I bought ovulation test sticks to help the algorithm as much as possible. After three months of tracking, the app was pretty confident about which days I was ovulating so we went for it, but I was convinced that it would take several tries before I actually got pregnant.*

I had a couple boxes of pregnancy tests, but started taking them waaay too early—like eight days before my missed period. I was excited, ok!? So after the second negative test, I ordered a huge box of cheap ones from Amazon so I wouldn’t feel guilty about taking them so often. I forced myself not to take one six days before my missed period, so I felt like i deserved to take one on the fifth day (yes, I’m neurotic). It was a Saturday morning and at this point the only symptoms I had were tiny pimples on my forehead and a visual migraine, but I chalked it up to PMS until the word PREGNANT popped up on that test. I was in shock and so full of adrenaline that I immediately showed the test to a very hungover Jason who immediately asked, “IS THIS ACCURATE?” So I chugged a bunch of water until I could pee again and took another test. It confirmed the pregnancy, but of course it still didn’t feel real until I started getting nauseous.

*I’ve had lots of friends who have had a really hard time getting pregnant, and I know we are incredibly lucky that everything fell into place on our first try. Who knows if this will be the case if we try for more in the future, but for now I’m so grateful and my heart goes out to everyone who is trying or going through IVF or grieving a loss right now ❤️

SYMPTOMS

• The acne on my forehead started getting worse and spreading to my chin.
• I started cramping quite a bit—felt a lot like period cramps.
• My boobs started getting really sore and growing like CRAZY (they’re huge now).
• I got really tired early in the evenings and couldn’t sleep in past 7:30 even on weekends (I still work West Coast hours, so I had been in the habit of sleeping in a bit).
• My belly was crazy bloated.
• I started getting super queasy before and after eating (so grateful I was working from home during this time—the thought of riding the train every day while feeling like this is my actual nightmare).
• Crying over everyyyyything, like even TikToks that were slightly heartwarming.
• I worked out pretty consistently through the first trimester, but I noticed I lost my breath and got WAY more tired than usual.
• Sinus problems—my sinuses are always troublesome, but apparently your sinuses swell even more when you’re pregnant, so the netty pot has been on double duty every day.

CRAVINGS

• I hadn’t been eating any meat except fish leading up to this pregnancy, but I started craving chicken like crazy. Especially chicken tenders/Zingers.
• French toast, waffles, pancakes—all sweet breakfast foods! I used to be a strictly savory breakfast kinda gal, but suddenly French toast was everything to me.
• Sweets in general. I was so good about eating healthy and avoiding sugar before but suddenly I was DYING for brownies, cookies, even cake! I don’t even like cake, but wowzas hormones are wild.
• Bagels with REAL CREAM CHEESE. The weirdest part of this pregnancy so far is that my lactose intolerance has somehow decided it doesn’t exist, but I am NOT complaining. I haven’t had this much cheese probably since I was a child.
• White rice/fries/crackers. Anything bland that would make the nausea go away.
• BLTs, again, hadn’t eaten pork in about a year but suddenly it was all I wanted.

AVERSIONS

• Eggs—we have fresh eggs now and J was cooking them every morning but even the smell would make me gag.
• Salmon, another favorite before getting pregnant that one day suddenly grossed me out so bad. I ordered it at a restaurant after our photoshoot and almost threw up after one bite. I had to order fries instead 😂
• Coffee—this worked out since you’re not supposed to have a whole lot of caffeine anyway, but I’d take one sip, get nauseous, and drink ginger ale instead.
• The preggy pops and ginger candy I was eating religiously to keep nausea at bay eventually started reminding me of feeling nauseous… Still can’t eat those preggy pops anymore.

FEELINGS

I wanted to tell everyone SO BAD. It was so hard keeping it a secret (we did tell our families very shortly after finding out). I was constantly thinking, reading, dreaming, talking about it with J and my family, so it was very hard to keep the news to myself. I managed to keep it in until around week 12 though. It wasn’t until we got an ultrasound and heard the heartbeat at week 8 that J started to believe it was real. She looked like a teeny little gummy bear back then. Hard to believe we’re already halfway now! We absolutely cannot wait to meet our little nugget.