I'm Back!

Well I must apologize for the long delay! 4 months have gone by already! At first, to be honest, I just wasn't in the mood to write, and then life caught up with me. I have a lot to catch up on! For today I'll focus on the first trimester.

The last I wrote, I was about 6 weeks. I still had to see a local fertility specialist for my monitored visits, checking in with the IVF center that did the transfer regularly, and still injecting myself with progesterone. That continued through to the end of October. From about the end of August through the end of October, I had so many ultrasounds and spoke with my IVF nurse so much, it was a bit of a shock when it stopped! It felt like they were cutting the umbilical cord, no pun intended! Not long after my last post, I had the ultrasound confirming the heartbeat. That was a really gratifying moment. Even though everything was going as it should be, I couldn't help but be more concerned during the first trimester, probably because of the miscarriage last year. So seeing the heartbeat really helped ease some nerves.

I had to finish the progesterone shots through to the end of the month. By the last week or two, it was really hard to get through. I was just so over it. Sometimes it was really painful and sometimes it didn't hurt at all. I was losing track of which side I should be injecting on. You're supposed to alternate each night, but it got to the point where I couldn't keep track anymore. Sometimes the fluid and/or the blood would leak too. It was a process, every night, for weeks on end, from withdrawing the medicine into the syringe, switching the needle, warming it, injecting it, and then caring for the injection site to help reduce soreness and help the progesterone absorb into the muscle. Every night. And there was a lasting soreness, partially in the muscle and partially in the nerves. And the odd sensations in the nerves lingered for much longer as well, up to a month or two after stopping. So yeah, I was ready to stop when the time came!

I was surprised at how quickly my boobs got bigger and my belly already started to show a bit. To the average person, they probably didn’t notice. But having lost 18 pounds right before becoming pregnant, and also being able to compare it to my first pregnancy, I noticed the difference! It really did not take long at all. That could have been coupled with my need to eat more and digestive issues, but I definitely saw the difference. When you’re pregnant, you will also notice the digestive issues I just referred to. Apparently it’s common in the first trimester, which I read when I looked it up because of what I was experiencing. It’s certainly annoying! Sometimes I didn’t know if my belly was bigger or if I had that much gas in my intestines making me that bloated! Oh the digestive problems during the first trimester are both so much fun and make you feel SO attractive. I was very happy to see them go!

So for the bulk of the first trimester, probably from around the time of my last blog entry, about 6 weeks, to about 11 or 12 weeks, I had the joy of dealing with the morning sickness. Actually, saying that now, it's really only about half the trimester. The HCG starts going up about 4-5 weeks, and stays up until about 12 weeks when it comes down and the morning sickness subsides, usually. I have known people who have morning sickness longer, but fortunately for me, that hasn't been the case in my pregnancies. I must admit, the constant queasiness did make me wonder why I wanted to be pregnant again. My form of morning sickness basically meant that I always felt a little bit nauseated. Not enough to actually puke. I think I only gagged once. But enough so that my stomach always felt uneasy. I started wearing sea bands, which were recommended to me from a friend. They are acupressure bands that go on your wrists that help relieve nausea. Some days they worked better than others. At the time, on my good days I was so happy not to feel sick. It wasn't until the nausea completely went away, about 11-12 weeks, that I realized that even on my good days there was still an underlying feeling of queasiness. I had just gotten used to it! It went away completely about a week before I expected it to, corresponding with me getting a bad cold. I'm not sure if it went away because of the cold or because of my hormone levels changing, but I was happy to see it go! 

That cold ended up lasting 2-3 weeks with a horrible cough. At night, sometimes I didn't think I would get a moment to breathe. I felt like I was going to cough so hard that my insides would come out. So even though I tried really hard to avoid any medication at all, I ended up caving and asking my doctor for something. She prescribed me an antibiotic safe for pregnancy, and I literally felt the difference immediately. I don't think I would wait that long again. I just thought it was a cold and that nothing would help. But there are safe medicines, and it turned out I needed one!

Going back to October now, I went through a bit of a rough time that month. I wasn't officially diagnosed, but I believe that I went through a bout of prenatal depression for about 2-3 weeks. At first, I just thought it was the hormones. But it got worse. I was crying a lot, for seemingly nothing. Little things would set me off. I started to think it was more than just hormones so I did a little reading on it and figured it was more of a prenatal depression. An article on Babycenter said that "the rapid increase in hormone levels at the start of pregnancy can disrupt brain chemistry and lead to depression." I went through a list of symptoms and some of them corresponded with how I was feeling...feeling sad for most of the day, excessive crying, extreme fatigue, a desire to eat all the time (though this could also have been because of the nausea), and feelings of hopelessness, were the main symptoms for me. It was never to the point where I was in danger of hurting myself. But I felt badly every day. I was just about to the point where I would discuss it with my doctor and consider the options to safely treat it, when it just went away and didn't come back. I have felt fine since! I'm sure this was part of the reason, if not the main reason, why I didn't really feel like writing for the blog in October. I was also hesitant to mention this publicly because I didn't want to worry my IP's or my family. But I think it's important to touch on these subjects publicly. Apparently it wasn't always believed that pregnant women could suffer from depression. But prenatal depression is real, and you should talk to your doctor about it if you suffer from it. There are various options of treatment that do not include medications, but medications can also be prescribed in extreme cases. It's better to handle it though, especially if you're having extreme feelings of hopelessness leading to possible thoughts of harm. I hope mentioning this here helps someone else too.

So my last topic for the first trimester and today's update is eating! This kind of goes along with the morning sickness, but stay with me. People tend to ask me, what am I craving? Everyone always assumes, from the movies and television shows, that everyone has weird cravings when they’re pregnant! I’m sure that it happens a little bit, but it’s really not bad for me. Sure, there are times that I decide I have to have something specific. But it’s not usually something weird. For me, the main thing is aversions. My first trimester was very interesting because I had a lot more difficulty eating than I remembered from my first pregnancy. Well, first of all, I constantly felt a need to eat. The nonstop nausea made me want to eat all the time. If I got too hungry, I would feel sick. I always needed to have something in my stomach. My parents even looked at me one day and said “Can’t you just stop?!” No, the answer is no I couldn’t. I would get sick if I did.

Of course, this was hard considering that suddenly I couldn’t eat as much! I was expecting the aversion to ground beef. I remembered that one. I can eat it, but if it’s too mealy, it turns me off. Raw meat and raw chicken in general is difficult for me to cook. I have to turn my nose away. It’s easier now that I’m no longer in the first trimester. My nose was more on alert then! I felt like I could smell everything! At work, where I’d walk around concessions and literally smell tons of different items being cooked at all times, it was an exercise on keeping my stomach under control. There were some areas that were safe and some that weren’t! I used to love pad thai, and it’s one of my daughter’s favorites that she asks for all the time. I can’t even smell it now. There were times that I gagged because of an aversion to something I was eating, that had nothing to do with morning sickness. Certain cooked fish didn’t work for me anymore. If I got a piece of meat with gristle in it, there had better be a trash can close by! And the people who say that you crave items because of the nutritional content are definitely wrong! I craved candy and Taco Bell more than anything else! I had really gotten myself away from food like that prior to becoming pregnant. I was eating more healthy. But that’s what I wanted! Oh and vegetables? Yeah, you could count them in my list of aversions now. Not all, but most. I would still get some in of course, but it was harder to do than before because they were doing the opposite of appealing to me. I had a moment, watching The Good Wife, when the pregnant character pulled a bag of Pop Tarts out of her purse and apologized but they were the only thing she could eat. I completely understood her! Because I too was depending greatly on Pop Tarts! I hadn’t eaten them in ages. I tried to get away from them because of the artificial ingredients. But the pregnant body/nauseated stomach wants what it wants. Though now I’m no longer a fan again. Now they induce heart burn. But they did help me through the first trimester. As the first trimester winded down, I did find that I could eat more of what was repelling me. Now, it’s not like before I was pregnant, but it’s not as bad as it was during the first trimester, so my variety of intake has improved.

Another side effect that goes along with the eating was my taste buds! Again, it was more amplified during the first trimester, and isn’t as bad now, thankfully. But I felt like my taste buds were particularly on high, especially extra sweet or extra bitter. Because of it, I found myself unable to eat some of my favorite meals, not because of an aversion to the food, but because when eating it, my taste buds would pinpoint something that was making it extra sweet or extra bitter, and make me dislike it! Because of the combination of my aversions and my taste buds, the list of things I could eat really narrowed. Pizza was one of the few things I could eat anytime. Homemade macaroni and cheese as well. Of course, that’s not all I ate. If I had to force myself, I ate a bit more of a variety. But my point is, it gets hard when your options diminish!

Throughout all of this, I always had in my head, I’m caring for someone else’s baby, so I want/need to do what’s best for it/them. Not that I wouldn’t for my own anyway, but it’s an extra pressure. Sometimes I felt guilty for craving junk. But I really can’t help it! I forgot how much the pregnant body wants what it wants, end of! Of course I still make an effort to take good care of myself and subsequently, this baby. I probably take better care of myself than many out there who are pregnant. But there is an added weight on your shoulders that I, at least, feel like I have to balance with the demands of my body.