Baby #2: Bump pictures and the trials of my first trimester

TW: Miscarriage¦ It feels a little odd writing this blog post now, as I’ve now reached 19 weeks! However, I didn’t dare to write it when I was in my first trimester. I’d started writing about the first trimester with my second pregnancy, when it ended in miscarriage. This time round I’ve been cautious and perhaps a little superstitious. Nevertheless, the time has now come to reflect on those first 12 weeks and share them, along with some early bump pics!

Positive Test

As I explained in the blog post announcing my pregnancy last month, I’d often been having ‘early pregnancy symptoms’ shortly before my period. Each time, it ended in a negative result and a lot of disappointment. Come May, I barely dared to dream. I just went through the motions of doing a test. I’d noticed some changes in my boobs that made me wonder, as well as a very odd cycle. When I went to the bathroom at the end of the long 3 minutes of waiting, my heart fluttered with joy, hope and a smattering of anxiety. It was positive!

Symptoms

Almost as soon as I found out I was pregnant, I had nausea and felt exhausted. The nausea was far more intense than with my first pregnancy with Autumn. It was relentless. I felt sick all day and barely felt like eating. For weeks I struggled to even drink water sometimes and existed on boring plain foods. Jacobs cream crackers and toast were my go-tos. Sometimes I was brave and ate an apple, only to suffer with awful acid reflux (another problem I never really had the first time round). One night I craved beetroot and had some, only to find myself hugging the toilet at 1.30am. With Autumn, I’d never actually been sick, just felt it!

The evenings were the worst. Why do they call it morning sickness?! It was a struggle to decide what to have for dinner and often I could barely stomach any of it. I felt sick if I didn’t eat and I felt sick if I did eat!

I was also tired to the point that I was sleeping 10 hours at night and having 2 or 3 naps a day. Unfortunately, I had no energy or motivation to do anything and pretty much just moved between bed and the sofa as I felt so awful.

As I got closer to 12 weeks, the above problems were all still there. However, I did manage to get a little more adventurous with food! I’d stopped having ginger biscuits for nausea though. It kind of got to the point where I had an psychological association with the smell and feeling nauseated, which in turn made me feel even worse when one got anywhere near me! The other issue was that from the 10 week mark, no matter how hydrated I stayed, I was having daily headaches.

Cravings

I felt I needed to stick to plain foods, but every now and again I really craved sweets! There wasn’t a flavour I craved, but I particularly enjoyed sour apple. As I previously mentioned, I craved beetroot one evening and that did not go well. As much as I love beetroot, I’m nervous to attempt eating it again!

Dealing with anxiety

As overjoyed and grateful as I am to be pregnant, the miscarriage I suffered in December has generated a lot of anxiety about this pregnancy. Counselling has helped with this (I previously mentioned this in my pregnancy announcement post). Feeling so ill in the first trimester got me feeling really down, but at the same time it seemed to me that it was a good sign that my hormones were strong and that things were going well. I also had a couple of private scans to reassure me.

Bump Photos

I’m quite petite, so I start to look pregnant pretty quickly! I started documenting my growth in photos quite early on, as it’s exciting to see the progress!

The first trimester was quite a mental struggle for me, as I tried to keep positive when I felt so awful and argued against my brain’s miscarriage anxieties. I’m very glad to have progressed onto the second trimester in many ways!