First Trimester Experience
First trimester! What an experience. I don’t even know where to begin… should I start with the weird parts? The amazing parts? The challenging parts? There is so much I could share, but I think the main things I want to dive into are things that would be helpful for me to read if I were deep in Trimester One again. I did a lot of reading of articles and blogs, trying to find out if various things were normal and trying to find comforting posts. It did reach a level of information overload, so I stopped doing this as much after a while, but maybe this will help you if you are in an information-seeking-stage.
Overall symptoms / “How are you feeling?”:
The answer to this question changed so much day to day and especially week to week. At first, I felt generally great… so happy to be pregnant after a while of trying and one early loss last year. I really couldn’t think about anything else for a few weeks due to a mix of excitement and also anxiety, knowing that a second loss in the early weeks is not unheard of. I think the biggest surprise the first week or two was that my symptoms seemed to change every single day. I expected to kind of find out what my pregnancy symptoms were and then those would be the symptoms I was blessed (hah) with for the entirety of my first trimester. But every day those early weeks was different. Some days I had cramps, sometimes quite painful, similar to what period cramps (and my past miscarriage cramps) can feel like, some days I had constipation, sometimes the opposite, some days I was having hot and cold flashes, other days super sensitive skin, bizarre muscle spasms, extreme hunger and some days I felt completely normal…like, weirdly normal.
As time went on, a lot of those symptoms leveled out and my main symptoms were: VERY tired, strong food aversions, excessive hunger, and on and off cramps. I was also a bit nauseous around weeks 9 and 10 mainly, but it was manageable (I have a very low tolerance for nausea and was nervous about this part, and while it wasn’t comfy, for me, it was not nearly as bad as when you’re nauseous from actually being sick).
The biggest challenge for me with the first trimester was probably my mental health. I’m not sure if it was hormone related, anxiety related to our prior loss, or something that just kind of comes with growing a little one that you love, but I had a good amount of anxiety until our second ultrasound which we had around week 9. I deleted all of my social media until around then, because I found that there was so much anxiety-inducing mom/pregnancy content even when I wasn’t looking for it, and even “helpful” content was just adding to my information overload feeling. Deleting social media was super helpful and I felt great without it. I re-downloaded apps for work once I started to feel better, but I am pretty quick to swipe past mom content when I see it unless I can tell it’s going to be funny or happy, because I’m just not ready for advice or warnings yet!
I also struggled a bit to adjust to how unproductive I was. I really forgot/underestimated just how extremely tired I would feel. The good news is a lot of growing up happens when you go through challenging times, and I feel better as a person for making it through that time! Basically about a month of up and down anxiety (week 4 to week 9) and have been feeling good since then. I tried to mostly stay distracted and have really low expectations for myself during this time and I am grateful I had the flexibility and a supportive partner to be able to get a lot of rest during this month.
I think letting go of my normal perfectionistic tendencies was really great for me to experience actually. Once I reached sort of a peak level of anxiety that I knew I couldn’t sustain for my entire pregnancy or even for the first trimester, I found myself letting go in a new way, and not only having more grace for myself, but also for my husband, who was going through an adjustment too as I became much more needy and much less helpful around the house etc. I just felt overall a sense that there was absolutely no way I could achieve my normal goals, and I did not have energy to be upset over things that sometimes upset me, so it was easier in a way to be a bit more surrendered and understanding and just taking life one day at a time. I think this was a great lesson for me to learn pre-parenthood and I hope parts of it stick around.
Adjusting to eating enough and finding things I could tolerate was another tough part, but it got easier as I found my “things” and so many people reassured me that my appetite would eventually go back to normal, which was helpful. I did find that getting in a good daily fast 20 minute walk helped a lot with my energy and with food aversions (like if I got some exercise one day, then the following day I would notice I felt a lot better), though I had to cut back on exercise eventually do to a hematoma (will share more in the next section). It was also reassuring to hear that during the first trimester especially, calories are more important than quality of food. Folic acid / Folate is essential, which is included in prenatal vitamins, but it’s very common to not be able to eat “well” in the first trimester, so it was nice to hear that and I felt more comfortable after that living off of english muffins, waffles, and bland pasta for a while.
Things I was worried about that ended up being fine:
I wanted to list a few things that made me feel anxious in the moment that ended up being fine, for anyone who is worried about one of these things:
Cramping: Cramping was my first pregnancy symptom, and it was painful enough that I was sure my period was about to start. I had actually cried and had a tough day when they started because I was so disappointed to not be pregnant again. Of course, I was wrong, and I actually was pregnant (yay), but the cramps did continue… I want to say pretty much every day for the first two or three weeks, and after that on and off continually until a few weeks into the second trimester. I had the dull achey period-y cramps in my abdomen and in my back, and I also had some sharper pains in the same area that in hindsight I think may have been digestion-related. In those first couple of weeks I was nervous about a miscarriage, but I was also so nervous about an ectopic pregnancy. From what I understand, they can’t really check to see if you have an ectopic pregnancy until you are around 6 weeks, because before that, the baby is too small to see via ultrasound, and blood tests may show signs but aren’t really certain to prove anything either way. So those first couple of weeks was just waiting to find out if the pregnancy was viable and trying not to overthink every little pain. I’ve never experienced an ectopic pregnancy, but if you are also nervous, FYI: I have read that they are quite uncommon, and wanted to share that I had more pain than I expected for a healthy pregnancy where baby was fine. It wasn’t like intolerable pain at all, but it was painful enough sometimes that I had to lay down. So if you are having a lot of cramping too, that’s not necessarily a bad sign! My doctor said it was likely from the uterus stretching to prepare for the baby to grow.
Low Progesterone: We first saw the heart beat just before I reached week 6, which was a big relief, however I also found out at that appointment that I had lower than ideal progesterone levels, and despite supplementing, they continued to drop for the next two weeks. They went from 21 (great), to 15, to 16, to 12 (weeks 4 - 7). I was very anxious that a loss was looming, especially on days when I did not have many symptoms other than cramping. When we heard the heart beat again just before week 9, I felt so much better, and after doubling my progesterone supplement, those levels had started to increase a little bit (back to 16 week 8), so that was encouraging. My doctor said that most people can stop this supplement around week 10, and we did not continue to test after week 8. Also, many people told me to “try to relax” and that progesterone and stress are linked, which I knew, but it was just not realistic for me to actually relax because I could try to “chill” but deep down I was worried about the baby and doing a relaxing activity or having a positive attitude was not going to really change that in any big way. I found it was better to let myself just feel what I felt and be honest about how anxious I was and do my best to let myself receive comfort and not worry about getting things done. So if you are also worried that your stress is affecting your baby — be comforted by the fact that I was very anxious and my baby is still fine.
Blood Clot / Hematoma: At my 9 week ultrasound, I was told I had a blood clot in my uterus, which is also called a hematoma. I think I had just heard a lot of horror stories (pregnancy or not) that had the words “blood clot” involved, so this kind of freaked me out at first. My doctor was very reassuring that it is super common for pregnancy and that I shouldn’t worry, but that I needed to be on a sort of pelvic rest and especially stay away from strenuous exercise. They would check on the blood clot in two weeks with another ultrasound to make sure that it had gone away. She also warned me that this could cause some spotting, and I’m glad she gave me a heads up because I did have a little bit of spotting. From what I read, this could also be a source of some of the cramping I’ve experienced (though there are lots of reasons for cramping including a growing uterus!). I have a friend who had a blood clot that caused lots of bleeding until halfway through her second trimester, for two pregnancies, and both her babies were also fine! So, sometimes cramping and bleeding are not a bad sign, and “blood clot” doesn’t have to be scary. If my doctor hadn’t warned me, it definitely would have scared me, but all was fine! My hematoma was still there at 11 weeks, but was gone when we checked again at 16 weeks.
The best parts:
Both ultrasounds were absolute highlights for me. When I see other people’s ultrasounds, they look like weird blobs of what-am-i-looking-at, but after seeing and hearing the heart beat and realizing that those are my baby’s arms and legs (!!!), our ultrasounds are the cutest pictures I’ve ever seen in my life. Even though I have had moments of feeling a little bit trapped or overwhelmed, overall it is really amazing to learn about everything my body is doing to grow a little life, and incredible to learn how quickly they really become so human.
I was only 5 weeks, 6 days along when we saw the first heart beat (some don’t see it until a bit later than that). That means I had been pregnant, really, for less than 4 weeks, and it was already pumping on it’s own. Less than a month later it had taste buds, fingers, toes, a sense of smell, hair follicles, inner ear fluid?? and every essential body part, though it was only a little over an inch tall. It is truly miraculous and I’m grateful to get to experience being the home for my little baby while it grows.
I loved using an app called “Ovia” to track the pregnancy. It has the typical “What size fruit is your baby?” tool, but it also gives a daily update about what features the baby is working on, tips for the mom and what you might be feeling around that time, and the cutest part — a diagram that shows how big baby’s hands and feet are at the time!
I enjoyed working on our baby registry and a baby scrapbook on days that I wanted to feel semi productive but couldn’t get myself to think about anything unrelated to baby. There is a lot to research anyways, so this was a great activity for me at the beginning! I also eventually found pregnancy Reels/TikTok really funny once I got back on social media because they were so relatable and kind of made me feel better about how lazy I felt!
I am finally starting to feel like myself again and though I am still tired, I have a lot more energy than I did for a while, and food is starting to sound better to me (I ate actual chicken the other day!), which is such a relief. Everyone told me that would get easier but it was kind of hard to imagine in the thick of it, so I’m thankful to report that it indeed does get better!
Overall, I would say this first trimester was a little bit harder than I expected, or maybe just harder in a different way than I expected, but it’s just two months of your life, and billions of other women have been through it before successfully, so if you’re in the thick of it right now, you can do it!! As my mom said to me once, “Think about every person you know! They were all successfully born!!” And it’s true — everyone you know has been born! Lots of miracles all around.
Onto Trimester Two!