My First Trimester (Yep, I'm Pregnant!)

This post is dedicated to my first trimester, the first 13 weeks of my (first!) pregnancy: everything from how I felt to food aversions and what helped me through it.

For all things second trimester, click here!

Hello, everyone! If you haven't heard the good news, Sean and I are expecting a baby this June! We are so excited to welcome him/her into the world and begin parenthood. Plus, Breslin will be such a good older brother <3.

I wanted to talk a little bit about how my first trimester went! For those of you just interested in food/recipes, go ahead and pass on this post. I found it helpful as an expecting mom to read how others' first trimesters went, so I thought I'd share mine!

Before Getting Pregnant

I have always been a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. Before we got pregnant, we lived on the east side of the state (near Detroit) and I was getting 6-7 hours of sleep a night, waking up at 5am to work out and always stressed/rushing to balance my full time dietitian job and this blog. Once we moved to Grand Rapids, I started getting more sleep and kept my stress levels at bay and it happened pretty quickly!

Also, I had an IUD in and my OB said that most women are super fertile after the removal of IUDs, so if you have one take that into account for family planning! Not saying it's a certain thing, but this is just what my OB said!

My OB said that there were two ways to go about getting pregnant. One way, we could try to conceive a baby every other day when I was ovulating (generally in the middle of your cycle, day 11-day 16 for me). Or we could get ovulation test strips and use them during my ovulation window and only have sex when I was ovulating. We did the latter and it worked!

My friend recommended these Easy@Home ovulation test strips, so I bought a packet off amazon.

Food aversions, Cravings and Emotions

When I found out I was pregnant, I could tell! I felt very emotional, tired and just crappy overall! It almost felt like I was about to start my period. Swollen boobs, some cramping, fatigue and had a crabby attitude (yay for pregnancy!). The first few weeks after finding out, those symptoms went away, which was great, but then the nausea kicked in.

The nausea wasn't super terrible, but looking back it did affect my appetite because I think I lost a couple pounds (although that could have been because I wasn't drinking lol). Our first appointment after finding out we were pregnant was with the nurse (that's just how our OB office does it!) and she went over things to expect/tests we could do and overall the 'do's and don'ts' of pregnancy. She told me to start taking my prenatal vitamin at night and that helped out immensely with my morning sickness! It was almost gone.

Fun fact, if you live in Michigan or the Midwest, you can get your prenatal vitamins at Meijer for free. My doctor originally called them into CVS and it only costs like $3-4/month, but then she told me they are free at Meijer, so I switched over.

Right around the beginning of December, the nausea pretty much went away, but the lack of motivation and fatigued really kicked my butt. The hardest thing in all of this was working from home on my blog, simply because I didn't want to cook! A lot of foods didn't sound good to me (pretty much only pizza, pasta or popcorn did) and whatever I made I didn't even eat and it was a waste because I just ended up giving it away or throwing it out. I had so many grand plans to get ahead on content for January, which is normally my biggest traffic month, but my body had other plans. Mentally it was exhausting.

Luckily, I never vomited or had other symptoms that I hear women get. By Christmas I was 13 weeks and my appetite was coming back around along with my energy.

Books & Apps I'm using

Before getting pregnant a friend of mine recommended the app, Ovia Fertility. After getting pregnant it allows you the option to transition into their Ovia Pregnancy app. I also use the app What To Expect Pregnancy for supplemental articles and info.

I didn't read any parenting or baby books in the first trimester, but I'll talk about some in my post for my second trimester!

Exercise During Pregnancy

My OB said to stick with whatever exercise routine I was doing before pregnancy. It is my understanding that they do not want you to start a new exercise activity after you become pregnant. Before becoming pregnant, I worked out at FlexCity Fitness (where I also teach at), which is an interval training class.

The first trimester I definitely slowed my running pace down a bit and didn't push myself as hard as I normally would. Why? Well because you are exhausted half of the time and in my mind I was worried about harming the baby at such an early stage. This is just my personal opinion and experience, but that's what I did. I stayed pretty consistent with getting a workout in 4+ times a week, but some days I did not even sweat in workout class and knew to take it easy. To be honest, moving felt good and my OB said it is good to stay active, so I did what felt the best for me and the baby.

After the first ultrasound (we had ours around 12 weeks) we could hear the baby's little heart beat and it was amazing! It made all the nausea, fatigue and lack of motivation worth it for the past 3 months. <3