The First Trimester

July 16, 2023

    I just finished writing my first post since being pregnant. It feels good to get that story documented, and relive the excitement all those months ago. As I sit here feeling my baby girl squirm inside me like a little goldfish, its easy to forget how hard the first trimester was. But not that easy cause it was really hard lol.

    Pretty much the day I hit 6 weeks, I hopped aboard the struggle bus. I remember the first time I threw up was the day after my graduation, and I was sitting at our kitchen table eating a delicious egg McMuffin sandwich with Dallin and Chloe. I love these things. My mom has been making egg McMuffin sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil all my life, and they are so nostalgic and yummy to me. Two bites in, I get the unfamiliar feeling of needing to throw up! I hadn't thrown up in probably over a year! It took me by surprise. At this point, its honestly comical to remember how shocked I felt when I threw up that first time. I'm estimating to have thrown up at least 120 times since then. Which for some reason still doesn't seem like that much haha, but I promise it feels like a lot. 

    I was just so caught off guard. It was like I was violently struck with the flu, but add onto that extremely sore boobs, intense cramping, and lightheadedness from the Progesterone I was taking. I was absolutely miserable. There was one particular day that was a turning point for me, where I knew I couldn't continue without medical intervention. I weighed myself that morning and had lost 8 pounds in just the couple days the vomiting had started. I had moved a mattress outside the bathroom door for ease of throwing up, and slept whenever I wasn't throwing up. I would eat a saltine-- five minutes later I'm crouched over the toilet. Take a sip of gatorade? Back the toilet. Repeat that scenario for anything I ate. 

    At one point, Dallin was at the store restocking my gatorade and cracker stash that was basically all flushed down the toilet, and I remember just sitting next to the toilet crying. I hadn't really cried about it all yet. I was only like three days into "feeling pregnant" and it felt impossible to live any life that wasn't solely vegging on a twin mattress in the hallway. I felt bad to make Dallin do everything for me, but even smelling the fridge would put me over the edge. Worse-- standing up made me vomit, so I would literally crab walk into any room I needed to go. It was very humbling. After crying myself to sleep one too many naps, I texted my doctor and begged for a solution. I was put on a nice schedule of 8mg Zofran twice a day, Unisom at night, and a B6 supplement for mornings. My life was not dramatically changed, but I was able to eat again. So I guess that is pretty dramatic. 

    The vomiting was slightly more under control, so I started perfecting my morning routine to avoid puking. It went as follows:

9:30 am Wake up.

9:31 am Take Zofran and eat goldfish, then watch Tiktok

10:00 am Toast two pieces of Cinnamon Raisin Bread with butter

10:05 am Put two pieces of toast on plate, with two strawberries, and either a Gogurt or cheese stick

10:06 am Go back to bed, lay down and eat breakfast while watching YouTube

10:30 am Finish eating VERY slowly, lay in bed until I can't feel the food in my belly anymore 

11:00 am Get out of bed, go to couch to watch a show until I am hungry again. Maybe throw up.

11:15 am Hungry again. Eat an apple and goldfish. Maybe more toast.

    And I'll stop there to bore you from the rest of my day. But just know it was boring. And so difficult for Dallin and I. I'm not really sure how much to talk about that aspect of the first trimester, because it's honestly still something our relationship is healing from. 

    I think the biggest contributing factor of my being pregnant so heavily affecting Dallin is that we were both home 24/7. Especially in those early weeks before we started going on trips, and renovating my in-law's house... we were stuck at home. Dallin's internship had recently ended, and we were both graduated, so the fun-loving unemployed summer we had envisioned was quickly being overtaken by a lentil-sized baby in my belly. Had Dallin been at work all day, I don't think he would have felt so much of the pressure of being a care-giver. But still, I didn't make dinner for months. I was a shell of a woman and even more so a shell of a wife. But I was too sick to really do anything about it. Even if I had the desire to make dinner, I literally didn't have the energy to, and I would surely throw up as soon as I stood up. Not to mention, unless I was making a dinner of toast and goldfish, there was no way I could stomach it. So it was take-out, frozen food, and snacks for Dallin. For a long time. 

    I knew that the first trimester would be hard on me, physically and mentally. But I was surprised at how hard it was on our relationship. Had I been warned about this, or expected it, I think we could have handled it with a lot more grace. It was a struggle enough to start the long and discouraging journey of job searching, but paired with having an incompetent wife?! It. Was. Hard. We are out of the thick of that, but still recovering and healing from the distance those first 14 weeks put on our marriage. But I wanted to think of some advice, or just ideas to make it better for us in the future, and anyone else dealing with this. 

1. Communicate so blatantly about your needs/how you want to be loved. Had I given Dallin a back scratch everyday the first trimester, I think it would have solved a lot of problems. And he did ask for them-- but for me, it was like why am I going to scratch my perfectly healthy husband's back when I am a frail sickly woman over here?? The answer? Because I love him. And because that's what he needed from me at a time where we couldn't live our normal, active life together. I think I held it against him a lot that I was the pregnant one. And although I do firmly believe in there being seasons of life, and some seasons you are the caregiver and others you are being cared for-- the presence of a particular season does not overrule the necessity to receive and give love. 

2. Make an effort to maintain habits you had prior to being pregnant. This is one I definitely did not encourage early on. The last thing I wanted to do was go to the gym, or go to church, or a family dinner, or make plans with friends. But those things that we do together as a couple were being taken away from one partner by the fault of the other. Like, I was choosing what both of our lives looked like, because I wasn't participating in the things we normally do together. Again, its much easier for me to wish I had done it differently being on this end of the journey, but I do believe it would have been worth it to suck up all the energy I had and go to the gym together, make plans with friends and family and initiate a hike or two. 

3. As the pregnant one, educate and communicate the WHY. To an outsider, I was wasting food, sleeping the days away, being lazy, and distancing myself from loved ones. On my side of the story... standing up made me throw up so I had to lay down, my body was literally creating a new person with the energy of my body, and it actually felt impossible to interact with other people when I felt so miserable. For us, it was helpful to share exactly what my body felt like, and why it was so necessary for me to sleep, and why I could only eat certain foods. Knowledge is power. 

    I guess those are really my only tips. My mom told me a lot "this will not last forever. Eventually it will get easier." The problem with this, is that in the moment "eventually" felt like an eternity away.  And 14 weeks is a long time! Now being on the other end, its easy to agree that yeah, eventually it will get better, but in the moment, its okay if eventually is too far for you to think about. Take pregnancy day by day. Take the hard conversations one at a time. Eat the goldfish, or Oreos, or popsicle, or whatever sounds good. Take the nap. Educate your partner why you need the nap, then enjoy it. Your body is creating a miracle, and it is certainly normal to not feel normal.