First Trimester Reflections

On December 1st 2023 I found out I would be expecting a little blessing. As exciting as this was I also just had been laid off from my job just two days prior. I had a wave of different emotions as I knew my life was going to change tremendously in just a matter of a year. But I am thankful every single day for God blessing me with the tremendous husband that I have and the abundance of encouragement he has provided me in this time. If you are interested in more about my experience and feelings with being laid off – Check out this post! 

For this post, we will talk about all things first trimester! What signaled me to take a pregnancy test were very very subtle signs. I am absolutely one of those girlies who knows her body extremely well. 

I feel many people are always curious and ask, did you guys plan this? Which I’m learning actually can be considered a very invasive question 😂 but I also get it… As a person that was very much a career driven woman, those are typically the circles I am in. Many people our age in those spaces just aren’t quite starting families yet. But in terms of planning, for us, the answer is a resounding yes! 

My husband and I got married in January of 2023 and we both knew before marriage that we really wanted kids! I am 30 so I definitely had some anxieties around the biological clock. I know… I wish I didn’t but I’m human. I absolutely was starting to kind of freak out and wanted to try right away. We started trying after my 30th birthday because I wanted to look like a full baddie for my birthday trip and it’s because I knew what was to come 🙂

**Sidenote, even while pregnant now, I feel beautiful. I wish before getting pregnant I had the assurance that pregnancy would make me feel beautiful!

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My signs of pregnancy:

My first sign of pregnancy was a really bad breakout on my face… I hardly ever get face acne so when I do it’s almost always around my cycle time but along with the breakout I also just felt HOT. Not just a little warm but my body was going ham like HOT! That was very unusual for me and prompted me to take a pregnancy test. I found out I was pregnant just at 4 weeks since we had been intentionally trying, so I found out pretty early. I honestly felt great at first…. I thought, “I got this” and “this will be a breeze” but then week 6 came and nausea hit me bad. From about week 6 to mid week 9 I felt horrible. 

Things that really hit me in my first trimester:

→ Nausea 

→ Food aversions (particularly salmon, the smell literally made me gag!)

→ Indigestion, I felt like I wanted to eat but I could barely eat a full meal. 

→ Just an overall horrible decrease in my appetite. Initially I was losing weight and that felt a little scary.

I would barely want to leave the bed for awhile … And this is when the blessing in disguise of being laid off came in because I literally was thinking I don’t know how I could have done it especially with the demand of high performance in what was a Director role.

“That’s when I truly believed God has everything happen for a reason.  As I am writing this I am about 11 weeks, so I am finally seeing the light.”

What I found helpful: 

→ Morning sickness vitamins 

→ Ginger candies (when I could manage, sometimes I couldn’t stomach them) 😰

→ Eating fruit but with a healthy fat like nut butter. Game changing tip!

→ Doing my best to beat the nausea and eat before I felt it. 

You are creating life, it may not be your finest or healthiest time in your life so if you can stomach anything, eat!

That is all I really have for my first trimester, I actually wish I documented better but there was so much going on… be back soon for 2nd trimester updates 🙂