That was just the 1st trimester?!

Pregnancy flies by but also feels like a lifetime! When I look back on all happened in our 1st trimester I am amazed what all was packed into that short period. All the emotions, moments, symptoms; it was nothing short of eventful!

Here is a little timeline of my 1st trimester. Some of these emotions and symptoms carried into the second and some didn’t last too long, but either way they are apart of our 1st trimester journey.

One thing that stayed consistent from the moment I found out I was pregnant until I gave birth was the overwhelming feeling of joy, excitement, and being scared out of my mind!

Positive Test

The first thing was obviously getting a positive pregnancy test and other than the initial stomach drop when I saw the positive tests, I didn’t have any symptoms. If I wouldn’t have had a dream of the way that I was going to tell family that we were pregnant I am not sure if I would have taken a pregnancy test that morning. Yet, that dream felt all too real and like a sign. (fast forward, I ended up telling those family members the way that my dream played out!) About a week later is when symptoms started to hit me very quickly!

The excitement of seeing the word ‘pregnant’ on the test was so overwhelming! We had to fight the urge to tell everyone we knew and saw that we were pregnant right away. After discussing it we decided to only tell our closest friends and our immediate families. I started to look up cute ways to tell family that we were pregnant. We decided that for a lot of our family we wanted to tell them in person if possible so we were going to wait until after we got our 1st ultrasound to be able to have those photos to use. Since we wanted to tell people in person we went ahead and told my parents, brother and his wife, and grandparents when we saw them for the holidays that next week. The joy and excitement reaction from family is something that I replay in my head all the time. Since this was before our first ultrasound it was very different reaction than rest of our family had as we announced we were pregnant and with twins when we told everyone else.

Nausea

The nausea started out subtle and lasting all day for about 2 weeks after I got the positive test. More of just an ehh feeling that never went away. I would notice it increase during meal times causing me to not be able to eat as much or only certain things on my plate. A big one that this happened with a lot was sweets! Right off the bat sweets were not my friend, I am someone who has a sweet tooth so this was very unfortunate.

Then we went on a little road trip to start looking at houses since we were going to be moving. That is when my nausea hit an all time high and made that trip and the weeks to come hard. The entire 3 hour drive I had to sleep in the backseat of the car and anytime I would open my eyes, I would immediately get nauseas. If anyone has driven through Arkansas, they know that we don’t have the straight roads like Kansas has, so every turn would feel like I was on the Tilt-A-Whirl. The only thing I was looking forward to was when we made it was a meal at this local burger place. We get there, order, and everything is fine. I am so excited to enjoy this burger and the endless fries that they are bringing to the table. Once the first batch gets to the table, I take a bite and was like ‘mmm, that doesn’t taste as good as it usually does.’ I tried to ignore the weird feeling about the fries and sat patiently waiting for my burger. As soon as my husband came back from grabbing ketchup and our drinks the burgers show up. Man, I was so excited for this burger! It was all I thought about for the 3 hour drive there. I take one bite, look at my husband, and muster “give me the keys”. As I walk out of the restuarant I am trying to breathe and not throw up this bite of burger. I get to the car, leave the door open and try to breathe (it was early December and freezing cold outside). I finally swallow my bite and immediately start to search for a ginger drop to help with the nausea feeling. The moment I find one, I text my husband and tell him I wasn’t feeling good and that I ddin’t think I could come back in so I was going to wait in the car for him to finish eating. I was so nauseas that I couldnt even finish the ginger drop and had to spit that out and lay down. As soon as my husband gets in the car I started to cry. He offers to drive anywhere and get me anything, he knew how excited I was for that burger and knew there wasn’t going to be much to make up for that but was willing to try. All I wanted to do was shower and go to bed. The rest of the weekend while we were driving around looking at houses I had to sleep in the backseat and have crackers or ginger drops within reach just in case. This really was the starting point of my all day bad nausea. The type of nausea that made me scared to eat anything that I actually liked in fear of getting sick from it. Slowly this got better throughout my pregnancy and it ended up going back to being a subtle nausea here and there.

Food Aversions & Cravings

My biggest weakness/craving food wise during my 1st trimester was chips and salsa! Oh man, I could HOUSE a bowl of chips and salsa, but only specific brands of it. Store bought was Kylito’s Original Salsa or a local salsa from my hometown in Kansas, El Zarape Salsa. We tried numerous different kinds, from mild to hot, chunky or blended, but every time it never compared to Kylito’s or El Zarape’s. As for aversions the only thing that I was kinda out on was burgers and multiple bites of sweets. Sadly, that incident when we were looking at new houses killed the excitement of burgers and also made me scared to eat them in. Sweets were hard for me not to have. I would be able to have maybe one mini piece of chocolate or a bite of a dessert, but that was it. Anything past that and I started to feel ehh and my stomach started to turn.

Ultrasound 1 & 2… RhoGAM Shot… Spotting

At 6 weeks I had my 1st and 2nd ultrasounds! The first one was to confirm that I was indeed pregnant and the ultrasound we found out it was twins! Since I have already talked about how that appointment went and all the emotions that came with finding out that news I won’t go over it again, but if you haven’t read that post or want to read it again, click here. Now, as for my 2nd ultrasound, that one was a little scarier for me. Our initial ultrasound happened on a Tuesday and since we couldn’t do an ultrasound on the outside of my stomach and, they mentioned that I might have a little spotting that night. Weirdly, mine started the next day. It started out small and barely there, I was making detailed notes of it in my pregnancy app so that if anything changed at all I could let them know. Then on Thursday night I passed 2 blood clots and immediately panicked! My thoughts was going south and I was trying to calm myself down and not think worse case scenario. Once I passed them I had no other bleeding that night so I tried to get some rest and decided to call in the morning. First thing in the morning I called my doctor and told them what was going on and they told me to be there in 30 minutes to get seen. I quickly gathered my purse and told my boss I had to go and would be back, but needed to go make sure everything was okay. This was the ONLY appointment that my husband missed and it was because they told me to get there so quickly and he worked 30 minutes away and had some meetings that he wouldnt be able to reschedule that fast. He did however have me call him so he could hear all that they said and so could be with me in some way. The do the normal urine sample and decide to do another ultrasound to make sure the babies were okay and see if they saw anything. I was on the edge of my seat with a lump in my throat, freaking out that she was going to tell me something bad. Thank goodness she said that both babies were okay and their heartbeats were still strong and looked good! She started to do some more looking around my uterus and found a patch on my uteran wall that was basically a scratch from when the placenta was attaching that had clotted up some. It had some big fancy term to it, but literally by the next week I forgot what it was called. She did ask me if I knew what my husbands blood type was and sadly we had no idea. Since we didnt know and she was concerned since I had this scratch on my uterus she decided to give me the first RhoGAM shot now to help with not have any more problems with bleeding and to keep both me and the babies safe. Typically, RhoGAM is given twice during a pregnancy, at 28 weeks and after delivery for a protein that is missing in a mother’s blood if her blood type is negative. Turns out my husband has a positive blood type like the babies have so it was a good call to give me that 1st dose of RhoGAM at 6 weeks since I was already having bleeding and was high risk.

Now that our 1st ultrasound was done and we had pictures and even bigger news to tell people, we were so antsy to get the news out there to our family! Now that we knew it was twins, I started to think of different ways we could tell everyone. We decided to wait a couple more weeks and tell them at Christmas; when we hoped everyone would be together. Some of the funniest moments that Christmas were watching family open those presents and get excited that we were pregnant and then either finally noticing the ultrasound picture of two or us explaining Baby A and Baby B to them. The screams and hugs of excitement and shock are core memories for me!

Ultrasound #3 … Cramping

Time for my 3rd ultrasound… At 8 weeks, right before the Christmas holiday, I started to experience some constant cramping. The cramps started out at night and I initially brushed it off, thinking it was something I ate and that I just needed to go to the bathroom. When it continued into the next day that is when I got a little worried. Luckily, I worked with someone who was a mom and a former nurse. I asked her if I should be worried and truthfully started to bawl when she came in my office to talk to me about it. Her words of encouragement helped ease my mind a bit and I went back to work. Later in the afternoon I was still freaking out and mentioned it to her. She was so kind and offered to sit with me while I called the doctor just in case I started to cry and couldn’t get my words out or if the doctor tried to brush off my symptom and fears. Thankfully my OBGYN prior to moving was great and when they pulled my chart and saw I was pregnant with twins asked me to come in first thing in the morning. My husband and I went in and again had another internal ultrasound. This time it wasn’t with my normal OBGYN, we later found out it was with the on site high risk OBGYN, which we are super thankful for as he was able to tell us what was going on. During this ultrasound he told us that the twins looked good and that their heart beats were still really strong. Cramping at the beginning is normal and as long as it is not partnered with other symptoms not to worry too much. He also let us know that we were having DI-DI Twins, which means that they were fully their own individual babies. They had thier own amniotic sacs and placentas, this is the best case when pregnant with twins and makes you a little less high risk. He was not concerned and gave me some suggestions to help with the cramping. I had to limit my caffeine intake more than I already was anything that had any caffeine in it(chocolate)! All my husband heard was “no caffiene” and he made it one of his jobs to monitor that! My one piece of chocolate that I could stand to eat was now not going to be a thing, especially if I had a Dr. Pepper or a small chai tea that day. For about 3 ish weeks I had maybe 1 or 2 chai’s and maybe 3 or 4 Dr. Peppers total and it helped so much with the cramping! It was the hardest 3 weeks and the caffiene headaches were a struggle, but for some reason at the beginning of my pregnancy the babies didn’t like any caffiene.

Move 3 Hours Away

Time to move 3 hours away from where we called home for 4 ish years! I was so excited for this new journey we were about to enter and starting our family. Something that I 10/10 do not recommend is moving while pregnant! Packing up one house, cleaning, moving 3 hours away, and then unpacking was so hard. I was constantly being told not to do something because I shouldn’t be doing it while pregnant, but also it needed to get done and my OCD self wanted to do it myself. It felt like unpacking took 5x as long as it should have since I wasn’t able to just grab and go and do it all. My husband would bring me in so many boxes a day before he left for work and that was what I would work on during my lunch and he would help me finish them or move them where they needed to go when he got home. Once we finally got it all done it then felt like we had to pack some stuff up and then unpack new stuff to start planning out the nursery. One thing that hit me hard with moving while pregnant was the feeling of being alone and cooped up or that I was missing out on things. I was entering this new stage of life and was going through a ton of changes with lots of questions that I wished I could just ask people close to me at a lunch or a coffee date and not feel like a bother by calling them to talk about it and catch up. My freinds are amazing and always said I was never a bother, but with it all happening at once and just the overwhelming feeling of it all made me feel the opposite of that. To add to feeling like I was missing out on things it just happens that a lot of the fun and exciting things that we were told about and read about this new place were going to be hard for me to do or would have to wait until after the twins were here. My husband could go do them, but then I would have been left by myself, which was not going to help this feeling. To help with feeling cooped up and alone my husband and I made it a point to try to do things on Saturdays to get out of the house and try as many new places as we could, find our favorite spots that we could bring the kids back to. Explore the town a little bit and get familiar with the area. The must try list is ever growing and will always be added to, but we did succeed and do have our favorite spots that are decently close and that we feel comfortable to take the babies when we want to get out of the house.

Bloating

My bloating started out pretty early on during pregnancy and in a previous post I talk more about all the emotions and feelings that I had associated with my bloating, to read that post click here! One thing that came with my bloating was constipation. I had heard that this was a symptom of pregnancy, but was hoping that since I had prior gut problems maybe it would do the opposite for me. SIKE! I have no idea why I thought that it was going to be that way, but I was trying to live in a fantasy world where it wasn’t going to happen to me. This is a symptom that stuck with me the WHOLE pregnancy and even into postpartum. If I can give one piece of advice to help with bloating, take the pills that help keep things moving, eat the fiber and iron, do it all to help with the bloating and constipation!

Get a New Doctor

Something that feels like it should have been higher up on our timeline is finding a new doctor. Which when I initially found this doctor, it was right after we found a house around week 8. What makes this moment so far down on this 1st trimesters timeline is how much of a pain in the ass it was to get into! We were officially moved by week 11 and my first OBGYN wanted me seen down here no later than week 12 so I did all I could to be ready for that. Yet, the patient transfer information was a nightmare and took 3 weeks. When I finally could be seen at all was week 13 and had to be with the nurse practicioner before we could see the actual OBGYN. Then we had to wait until week 16 to get an ultrasound and see the OBGYN that we requested. In a previous post I talked about the importance of doing your research when looking for a doctor, to read that post click here.

Hot Flashes

In the dead of winter I was laying in bed sweating so much and not because I was sick. The way that my body went from always being cold to always being hot was a flip of a switch and I was not ready for it. If my husband put his hand on my back I was immediately hot! I had heard that the hot flashes and night sweats were a postpartum thing so I was preparing for them then, not this soon. This paired with a growing belly and not being able to sleep on my stomach or back. Bedtime was not my friend and progressively got worse as my pregnancy went on.

And that’s a wrap on the 1st trimester!