Wow! I can’t believe I am actually writing about my first trimester of pregnancy! As much as the first trimester seemed to drag on at times, I can’t believe it’s already over. As I am writing this, I am 18 weeks. This pregnancy is flying by!!
Pregnancy has been a beautiful experience but I don’t want y’all to think everything has been perfect because that isn’t real life! I want to be as authentic and real as I go through this journey so that it can hopefully help someone else one day. So I pretty much experienced most of the common first trimester symptoms. Fun!
Morning Sickness
Umm more like all-day sickness. LOL I was super nauseous for the entire first trimester up until about week 13. It started when I woke up and lasted pretty much until dinner and then again if I stayed up too late. I would have cold lemon water as soon as I woke up because it was the only thing that helped. Crackers on my nightstand sounded like a good idea but they ended up making me more nauseous. I had a lot of sourdough toast with vegan butter. Like multiple times a day sometimes. At this point, I hadn’t told work about my pregnancy so I tried to hide my sickness while at work. Thankfully I was able to hide most of my face with my mask so you couldn’t tell how bad I felt!
Fatigue
Holy cow. Pregnancy fatigue is REAL. I had no idea that I would be as tired as I was. There were many days that I would go to work, come home, get in bed, eat dinner in bed, and then go to sleep because my body was so tired. I spent most of my weekends on the couch because my body needed rest to catch up from working through the week. I would say this started about week 6 and lasted through the first trimester.
Diet and Exercise
I had hoped to have this perfect pregnancy (what was I thinking? lol) where I was working out and eating healthy from the very beginning but that wasn’t the case at all. What even was exercise? I basically stopped working out at week 6. As you can see in the pictures below, I was so excited to get in my first workouts with the baby. I had planned to be as active as possible during the first trimester and the rest of my pregnancy. BUT as soon as nausea and fatigue hit, I was down and out. I tried multiple times to do some low-impact exercises but my body was so tired I couldn’t get through them. I went from working out almost every day to nothing at all.
As for my diet, it basically did a 180. I couldn’t even think about eating veggies. When I say I couldn’t eat a veggie I mean like I didn’t really eat them for weeks. The thought made me sicker. I lived off of sourdough toast and pretty much anything bland. I ate a lot of carbs because it was what I could get down. Dinners went from pre-planned to deciding right before dinner what I thought I could tolerate. (Poor Dylan was such a trooper!!)
Random Symptoms
Okay so one of my very first symptoms was super sore boobs. I’m talking they hurt when I walked. LOL I had to go buy comfortable bralettes to sleep in because I couldn’t not wear something. I’m pretty sure I grew a whole cup size between week 4 and 8.
I was also very emotional and cried over the littlest things. I remember being on the phone with my mom talking about our new house and I started crying over the trim in our bedroom!! Goodness. I was a mess.
I was very bloated since the beginning. This continued until around week 15! People kept commenting “wow you’re showing so early” but really I was just super bloated! I couldn’t fit into my normal jeans or work pants by week 8. I was super uncomfortable. On top of being really bloated, I was started dealing with constipation. (Not fun I know.) I already have that at baseline which is why gut health is so important to me. Being pregnant has made this issue even bigger.
Overall, the first trimester was a doozy. It was hard not feeling like myself and not being able to do what I would normally do. It was filled with a lot of nerves and excitement but I would do it all over again for this sweet little baby! Most days when I think back to it I’m like “Oh it wasn’t that bad! I could definitely do it again!” haha Hearing that little heartbeat for the first time was one of the most incredible moments in my life! As the weeks go on, I keep feeling better and better so it makes the harder times not as bad.
I am so excited to bring y’all along on this journey! Let me know what kind of pregnancy content you want to see in the coming months. If you have any tips, tricks or baby product recommendations, I’m all ears!
