PREGNANCY #3: The First Trimester - The Guilt, Mental Struggle and all of the Sickness

I can barely believe it, but here we are again...pregnancy announcement number THREE! Where to begin? Time really is flying this time and I'm now 16 weeks pregnant, which means I'm officially into my second trimester all ready. But lets go back to February when we found out that I was pregnant and all of those emotions that come with such a moment. Now before I begin I have to say that we are feeling extremely lucky to be pregnant again, but I also want to be honest. There is a lot of pressure to feel nothing but happiness when you find out your pregnant, but it isn't always like that. 

PREGNANCY #2: Tips for Surviving the First Trimester

The first trimester of pregnancy is hard, women often have morning sickness, sore boobs and tiredness to a whole new level! In your first pregnancy you can nap when you want to (work permitting of course), book in for relaxing pregnancy massages and generally look after yourself. However, second/third/fourth/fifth time you're pregnant those are often all luxuries of the past. This time around you have a child/ren to look after; one that doesn't sit still, always listen to instructions and is generally exhausting. Personally, I've found being pregnant second time around a lot harder as I'm not able to look after myself and other than the sickness I often forget I'm even pregnant.

PREGNANCY #2: The Struggle of the First Trimester

Just before we start I want to warn you that this post will involve a lot the hard experiences of the first trimester. Please don't think for one minute that I am not grateful and feeling ever so lucky for this pregnancy. I really am. But I want to keep this real and in all honesty I have struggled through the first trimester a lot.

PREGNANCY: My Top 5 Tips for the First Trimester

Being pregnant isn't as easy, as I naively thought it would be, yet it's the most incredible time as well. I have relied heavily on a small range of tips and tricks that I've learnt along the way that I wanted to share with you. If only I had known about these earlier I would have probably had a slightly easier first trimester. 

(Photo Credit)

Tip #1

Once your sensitivity to smells increases, it will hit you like you wouldn't imagine! There's no questioning, 'Oh I wonder if I've got an increased sensitivity to smells?', you know, trust me. I couldn't stomach a lot of smells: fresh washing, Tom's aftershave, any food cooking, LUSH bath bombs, my own perfume etc. It was pretty hard to avoid these but I would try my very hardest! I found that wearing a light scarf that had a smell on it I could handle (a berry smell was ok for me) was a sickness saver. As soon as I could smell something I didn't like I'd smell the scarf and wouldn't end up gagging. A slightly extreme move but honestly, when I say smells will repulse you, I mean repulse and you'll do anything to get away from it. 

Tip #2 

Sitting up in bed before getting out of bed. Simple, easy to do and it would help my tummy settle before getting up for the day. I found getting up straight away at 6am would leave me feeling light headed, sick and generally not very well. For the last 2 months I've been sitting up when my alarm goes off and then getting up 10 minutes later when the snooze goes off again. I couldn't stomach eating anything at that time, so it really helped to settle my nausea and definitely worth a try if your suffering from morning sickness. 

Tip #3 

Having food with you at all times. I take a 'picnic' of cold toast, apples, bananas and crackers out everywhere I go. Even if you think your only going to be half an hour it's really worth taking food with you. For me, if I don't eat every 2ish hours then I feel so incredibly sick, eating does help to make the nausea more manageable. Sometimes I couldn't be bothered to make toast and bring it out with me but boy did I regret it an hour later when I was feeling so so sick. 

Tip #4 

Sleep with a pillow in between your legs. Very early on into my pregnancy I struggled with lower back pain, which made sleeping difficult. I found that sleeping with a normal (I say normal because it wasn't a pregnancy one) pillow in between my legs and using it to rest my tummy on really helped. It took some getting used to but it was personally certainly worth it. I do plan to get a pregnancy pillow, which offers even more support, at some point soon as my bump is getting bigger by the day!

Tip #5

At times during the first trimester I found it extremely hard to be positive, as I was feeling so sick and knew that I had at least a month and a half still left feeling like that. If only I had known how incredible the first scan would be, I would have found it so much easier. As this is our first pregnancy, it's very much the unknown, so we didn't know what to expect at the scan. We were of course mostly concerned about finding out if our baby was doing ok, which they were. It was just so special, amazing and magical seeing our baby for the first time. They were dancing around, it's just so incredible to think that they are only about 6cm but already look like a little baby! So if your struggling with your emotions during the first trimester, then I'd try to focus on the first scan because I found that it changed my outlook on my pregnancy. 

What helped you through your first trimester?

Feel free to leave a comment :) 

Helen x

PREGNANCY: My First Trimester Experience

As you may have read in the 'I have some news' post (see here), we are expecting our first baby next year! It's such an exciting time and we feel so lucky to be given this chance to start our family together. Unfortunately though the first trimester was not particularly enjoyable for me. It is said to be the worst of all three trimesters, I can't comment yet if it is as I'm only in my second but it was a testing time for sure. I don't want people to think I'm moaning in any way about being pregnant because I'm not, I feel so incredibly lucky but when you can't do anything for months at a time it can be hard to focus on the happiness at times. 

The first month was alright, I was a lot more emotional and had some strange feeling in my tummy but other than that I felt 'normal'.

The second month was when things started kicking in. I became so incredibly tired, a completely new level I didn't know was possible. When I looked at the symptoms of the first trimester before getting pregnant read about fatigue and naively thought, how bad can it be?! I felt tired a lot lf the time anyway but oh no. Pregnancy tiredness is complete exhaustion, like standing up uses too much energy and going downstairs is a task that has to be built up to over many hours. It's horrible when you feel so useless, luckily Tom has been amazing and really has stepped up to the mark. At around 7/8 weeks I started getting really bad nausea and such sensitivity to smells. It meant I couldn't really move from lying down, sleeping was the only relief. I wasn't actually sick until 9 weeks though. 

The third month was the worst for nausea and sickness but better for fatigue. I was still very tired, we're talking 7.30pm bedtime everyday, which does make the day extremely short! But it's manageable. The sickness started around 9 weeks and was still happening up until around 15 weeks. As I'm in my second trimester now, it has come to a stop now, fingers crossed it stays like that. I know that I've not had the nausea/sickness as bad as some people get it, so I have been trying to consider myself lucky. I've also had complete food aversions since the start, something I really didn't expect. I have always been a food lover, so I always thought I'd be a food craver when pregnant but nope. I've hated pretty much all foods, except potato for the first 3 months of pregnancy. I couldn't wait to like food again! There have been many days when I could only stomach Rice Krispies and as a result I lost over half a stone. I've put it all back on again now!

I'm so excited to be in the second trimester, as everyone says this is the one to enjoy. It's also almost the run up to Christmas, so many exciting things happening. 

What was your first trimester like?

Feel free to leave me a comment :) 

Helen x

Disclaimer - these are just my experiences, every pregnancy is different.