The First Trimester

So, more details on our exciting news! It’s been such a full few months that it’s quite hard to think back and find the things I want to remember and record. Here goes!

It was early on a Sunday morning, the last in February, and sleeping in ceased to be an option when we both knew that we’d planned to do a pregnancy test first thing in the morning. I had a few tucked away in the bathroom cupboard, bought on a whim from the suppliers of my OPKs, and a few minutes after staggering out of bed, we were bouncing around the bathroom in shock and joy! Neither of us has anticipated or seriously entertained the thought that it would work so soon, (our donor well deserves his self-coined nickname of ‘Spermius Maximus’!) especially after last year’s delays, and the early hour seemed to make it all the more surreal. I think I went a little into shock, feeling stunned and blindsided and shaky, and B.’s face reflected all the same emotions.

There were immediate phone calls to our mothers and my sister, who all agreed it was news worth being woken up for! (B.’s mum had to get out of bed and go down to the garage, because her cellphone charger had been misplaced and the car was the only place the phone could be plugged in!) And then we basically sat around, alternating between gasping in disbelief and squealing with excitement.

When we finally pulled ourselves together, we did what we do best: research! That very afternoon, this pile of books quickly appeared in our bedroom:

My favourite is Jaquie Brown’s I’m Not Fat, I’m Pregnant, which has proven to be the best balm for first trimester nerves, as well as that desire to know as much as possible! She has a really good balance of clear info and hilarious diary entries. I love reading a NZ perspective too – I can understand all her cultural and local references!!

It was really weird to go to work the next day and know that my whole world had completely shifted, and yet I had to give the appearance of being completely normal. I think I did a pretty good job – I fast became an expert at disguising nausea bands with long sleeves or chunky bracelets, and copious quantities of ginger beer and plain crackers got me through all but the worst of days (which, of course, coincided with parent-teacher interviews at work…) I could (and did) use my dumb back (previously established as painful and annoying) as an excuse for lying on the couches in the staffroom very occasionally, and my slightly-reduced workload this first half of the year meant that I could escape earlyish each afternoon, and come home to sleep and sleep and sleep.

As far as first trimesters go, I feel like I didn’t have too bad an experience. The low-medium nausea was pretty continuous, but constant snacking helped hugely (even in the middle of the night!). I had a fair amount of ligament pain from the get-go, but acupuncture and osteopath vsits helped keep it manageable. The worst things were disturbed sleep and the aggravation of my IBS – my GP ended up referring me to a dietitian after I stopped being able to tolerate most forms of protein at about 6 weeks. Luckily, she helped me come up with a workable plan that has seen me through the past few months with very few bad episodes since. I still struggle with my sleeping patterns, but now that my appetite has picked up, I’ll eat most things! (that fit with my vegetarianism and IBS-related food intolerances…)

B. has been so loving and supportive – bringing me Weetbix in absurdly early hours, giving me backrubs and footrubs, and taking care of heavier household jobs that I would usually do. I felt particularly lucky to wake up late one morning in the school holidays to find her stacking a big load of firewood with her parents, in the pouring rain! She also put herself in charge of finding a good app to track things through, selecting iPregnant in the end, and setting it up for me. Part of her job is taking weekly belly shots too – they’ll start appearing here soon!

Of course, the highlight of the first trimester was getting to see our wee baby at the 12 week scan back at the end of April. Despite the positive tests (five by then, including one at the doctor’s clinic) and the symptoms I’d been experiencing, it really didn’t seem properly real until we saw that wriggly little body on the screen! So wriggly, even looking like a wee frog when it flipped over onto its front and then had to get back up the other way! And seeing the heart beating at a good 160bpm was the icing on the cake – couldn’t stop a few happy tears after that sight 🙂

First shot of our baby:

A very respectable 6.3cm!

 And the outfit we had to buy immediately after the scan!

Although the weeks seemed to crawl by at first, it’s amazing to realise that the halfway mark is mere days away now… I’ll be doing a second trimester (part one) post, with news of the gender reveal and pics of the progress on the baby’s room very soon!

S.