First Trimester Recap

Hello everyone and welcome to my little blog!

Today I have a fun post for you all about my experience with the first trimester.

I will be going over doctor’s appointments, symptoms, cravings, and my must have items.

Let’s start with doctor apointments.

I went to my 1st apointment at 7 weeks. They confirmed my pregnancy via a urine sample and assured me that I wasn’t at an increased risk for a second pregnancy loss. I was also told that I have a pretty high BMI so I needed to be careful about my weight gain.

My 2nd appointment was at 8 weeks and it was my fasted 2 hour glucose screening. Unfortunately I had to come in for a 1st trimester screening because of my high weight. But good news! I don’t have gestational diabetes.

My 3rd apointment was at 11 weeks and my husband and I got to hear the heartbeat for the first time – 170 beats per minute! I immediately thought we were going to have a girl. I also was given the Horizon test to tell us the baby’s gender, any chromosomal abnormalities baby might have and to test me for 40 different genetic diseases. Good news! Both baby and I are completely fine and we found out we are having a girl!

Let’s move on to symptoms.

I’ll start off by saying that I was pregnant last year and unfortunately I only made it to 14 weeks. Because of my previous loss, I was pretty anxious the entire trimester. Any time I felt a cramp or anything weird, I immediately would run to the restroom to check for bleeding to make sure I wasn’t having another miscarriage.

My next symptom is of course nausea. My nausea started before I had even missed my cycle and was one of the reasons I decided to take a pregnancy test. One of my coworkers jokingly said I might be pregnant and sure enough on July 4th, my husband and I found out the exciting news!

My nausea lasted the entire trimester. If something looked gross, smelled weird or didn’t sound like something I wanted to eat, I would almost lose my lunch. I was so sick I accidentally lost 13 lbs, so thank goodness I started out on the fluffy side!

During this time I had no cravings, but I had plenty of aversions. Everything made me gag and want to throw up.

I couldn’t eat any meat, I hardly could keep down carbs like pasta or rice, and I hated the idea of any fruit or vegetables. It was so bad I almost couldn’t even eat unhealthy food like macaroni and cheese or ramen noodles.

My saving grace was spearmint flavored Ice Breakers. I tried many different kinds of nausea reducing candies in many different flavors, but for whatever reason those were the only thing that worked for me.
I also felt faint and dizzy in the beginning. My OB said that was probably because of all the crazy changes that were going on in my body to prepare for and maintain the pregnancy, and to take it easy as much as I could.

My final symptom was exhaustion. I wasn’t bedridden with fatigue like I was with my last pregnancy, but if I didn’t nap every day at my lunch hour I would have to go home at 2pm because I would actually fall asleep standing up. On my days off I would have 2 or 3 naps on top of a full night’s sleep and still feel like I hadn’t slept a wink.

So that’s a complete recap of my first trimester.

If you are a momma, I would love to know the things you couldn’t live without during your first trimester?