The first trimester, what a rollercoaster the first 13 weeks of pregnancy can be. I always knew the first trimester brought challenges but I don’t think I was prepared for how weird and kind of alone I would feel. The fact that you know you are growing this tiny human and the major changes your body goes through just blows my mind. Not to mention the fact that no one else knows. I am happy now that I have moved into the second trimester and it is common knowledge, the hardest but best secret I have ever had to keep but I’m very glad to no longer have to keep it.
Finding out
I decided to get some early detection pregnancy tests because I wanted to know as soon as possible. My cycles have been irregular ever since I came off the pill so even though I was tracking my cycle it was hard to pinpoint anything so it was a guessing game. On a Friday morning at the end of February I decided to pee on a stick and wait for what felt like longest 3 minutes. When the timer went off I think I held my breath as I turned over the stick to see the faintest of blue lines on the pregnant side. Cue happy tears, slight confusion and aggressively waking my husband up to double check that it was indeed a positive test. To make crystal clear sure I took a digital test the next day which showed we were 2-3 weeks pregnant (which in NHS terms is 4-5 weeks). I am very grateful that we managed to conceive quite quickly as I know it isn’t always easy and I will never not appreciate that.
Being the super control freak I am I needed reassurance that in fact everything was ok and we were indeed pregnant. Due to the nature of how it works you don’t see a midwife until at least 8 weeks and as we found out super early this was too long for me. Which is why we had a private scan at around 6 weeks and I am so glad we did. For me it was totally worth it and even though the baby was literally a speckle on the screen it was incredible, we even saw their heartbeat and in that moment I have never loved anything more. I didn’t see my midwife until the start of April and we didn’t have a first scan from the NHS until the end of April so I am really glad we made the choice to have the early one.
Symptoms
As I mentioned earlier nausea was a massive symptom for me alongside being tired and getting out of breath quickly. This made my job very interesting as obviously feeling sick and out of breath aren’t the best for teaching fitness classes, but I managed. I did have to fake a couple of injuries when participating in classes as not to raise suspicion, so I am apologising to all the Blok instructors I told this little white lie to.
Salty beige carbs were all I fancied to eat as well as bowls of cereals to aid the nausea. Which meant a lot of smoothies were consumed to make sure I was getting the vitamins needed. Over the past 13 weeks I have tried a fair few alcohol free alternatives to prosecco and I still haven’t found one that quite hits the spot unfortunately, but I intend to keep on trying.
I have written a full blog post on this but a note on exercise during pregnancy. During this trimester I was a lot more tired than normal so didn’t workout as much. However when I did it was exactly the same as pre pregnancy as that is totally ok, I just made sure to listen to my body and lift lighter or take longer rests should I need it.
Telling loved ones
I know there is this unspoken rule that you shouldn’t tell before 12 weeks but we made the decision to let our close family and a couple of friends know super early on to have a support network. We wanted to have people around us who knew for the good and just in case anything didn’t quite go to plan. I also needed my mum to know so I could bombard her with all of the questions.
The rest of the family and close friends were told between 8-12 weeks, we tried to tell as many as we could face to face. It was so nice to be able to give some good news after this past year.
I am very excited for the journey ahead and to be able to share the news now. We are both very happy for our new adventure.
Baby Smith is due early November and we can’t wait to meet them
xxx
