The first trimester

So I know this isn’t strictly a weekly diary but as I started this blog in my second trimester I thought it was worth giving a quick recap of how it went…

Breasts

These started off as being a little tender, no more so then at the beginning of your period, but then one morning during week 6 I woke up with them feeling like they'd been through ten rounds with Mike Tyson. Shortly afterwards they REALLY started to increase in size!! I know for most women this is one of the signs of pregnancy they really look forward to but for me it really wasn’t. Mainly because I have already been blessed with rather large ones so I actually started to grow out of all my clothes by week 8, not because of a bump but because I’d started looking like a porn star. L

They also feel really different now, before they were really soft but now they’ve really started to harden as the milk ducts form and my nipples and areola are quite a bit darker and larger. 

Going to the loo

I'm told one of the most common early signs is a need to urinate every five minutes and whilst it wasn’t quite that often I’m still in week 14 not managing to sleep through the night. Apparently this occurs to begin with because whilst the baby sits in your pelvis it’s literally on top of your bladder. All I know is my baby is now definitely further up and I still need to go to the loo at some point in the middle of the night.

My advice on this one is just to try and cut down your fluids as much as possible in the evening. This was a hard one for me as I just couldn’t get enough liquids in the first trimester. I literally couldn’t ever quench my thirst it was really bizarre. However I tried really hard to make sure I only sipped a glass of water at least an hour before bed. That seemed to cut the trips down to just one around 3.30am every morning.

Exhaustion

This has been the most prevalent symptom for me so far. It's strange though because I wake up really early every morning (around 6.30am) with loads of energy but by about 3pm I'm literally asleep wherever it is I might be. I need a good hours nap every afternoon so that I can last through the evening and I don't mean a doze I mean an actual full on hour's deep sleep. I've never experienced anything I like it and I'm finding it really strange. The other day I went to watch my husband in a go-kart race but missed the whole thing because I fell asleep in my car in the car park for about 90mins before he came and found me, much to everyone's amusement. So now I'm just learning a new routine, much like I will have to when the baby arrives I guess, where I get up and get all my work done in the mornings and early evenings but make sure I don't arrange to attend any meetings in the afternoons which so far I've found perfectly manageable.

Morning sickness

I think this is the one I’m still struggling with most. I was quite lucky in that it didn’t really hit until week 8 when I was on a girl’s holiday in Portugal but ever since then I’ve been sick quite regularly. I find it’s usually worse if I literally don’t eat as soon as I wake up or if I start the day on anything acidic e.g. an apple. The other thing I’d recommend if you’re also suffering are the sickness bands you can get from chemists for travel sickness. They didn’t make the symptoms completely disappear but they really took the edge off which made a huge difference when I needed to behave professionally in meetings.

Sense of smell

See when everyone talked about this one I assumed they meant that all smells around you are heightened but apparently not. I'm just finding that my nose seems to be particularly sensitive to certain smells, e.g. when my mother got in my car with a tray full of starbucks coffee the smell was really overwhelming. I wouldn't necessarily say that it made me feel sick it just made me want to get away from it. The other one I really struggled with was Red Bull; someone opened a can of it the other day about two metres away from me but I could smell it as though the can was right under my nose. Also, unsurprisingly cigarette smoke has been a real nightmare. As a (not proud) ex-smoker myself I still have a lot of friends who indulge in the habit and whilst they’re great at trying their best not to do it near me, I can smell it a mile off. In fact it was the smell that sparked my first vomiting experience.

Although on the positive side I have to say that this all beginning to dull down a bit in the second trimester which is a relief.

Fears

After the joyous news of my pregnancy started to settle the fears also began to appear. The main one being miscarriage which I know is completely down to nature but you can't help but worry none stop about it. I always felt that if I’d say something about how excited I was about the baby or how Xmas will be interesting, I’d have to qualify it with a statement along the lines of 'provided everything is ok and we get through the next couple of months' just so that I didn’t jinx it. After I told my parents we were expecting (we decided to tell our closest family before the 12 weeks because lets face it most women want their own mummy at a time like this) I was totally convinced I was going to lose it.

Then at 10 weeks we had a proper scare where after a trip to the loo I noticed some spotting and following a phone call to my GP we ended it up in our local A&E. Thankfully everything was absolutely fine and we managed to get an early scan out of the experience but I can’t tell you how terrifying it was. I was totally convinced I’d done something to harm it. Even now we’ve had the second 12 week scan I still worry from time to time that something will go wrong. On holiday last week I accidentally did a belly flop into the pool and I was so scared I’d harmed it. It took an urgent phone call to my mum to convince me everything was fine. Maybe when I can actually feel him or her moving around I’ll be able to relax a bit more…