Gina - Pregnancy is Puketastic!
I was about 5 weeks pregnant when I found out the news and I thought then that I was feeling crappy. Little did I know what the next nine weeks had in store.
Instead of gaining a few pounds like many women do in the first trimester, I lost about 8. The constant nausea really took a toll. So much that I was given a prescription for Zofran and told to take as often as every 6 hours. Even the dissolvable medication made me sick. For those few weeks, the only thing I wanted to eat were grapes and peanut butter english muffins. I also craved Icee's. I know that's not a healthy option, but I was to the point that I needed to eat or drink anything that sounded good, just to take in the extra calories.
During my 9th week, something very scary happened. I was rear-ended while I was at a complete stop by someone who was going about 45MPH. My car was pushed over the median and into oncoming traffic on a busy highway during rush hour. Somehow I managed avoid hitting anyone coming towards me. All I could think after the hit was, "Oh crap, my baby!" Fortunately, my airbag did not go off. I had lots of burning on my abdomen from my seatbelt and headed to the hospital to get checked out. Thankfully everything turned out just fine. The doc said the baby was so well protected in my pelvis and that it was a good thing I wasn't further along. The only thing I had to deal with was a crappy rental car and some bruising on my belly. I thank my lucky stars it all came out ok.
At 12 weeks, I had to head back to the ER to get IV fluids, because I was so dehydrated. I learned pregnancy wasn't as easy as I had hoped it would be. Poor Charlie! Poor me!
The one good thing about this stage of my pregnancy is that Charlie and I finally got to hear the heartbeat of our little one. It was such a reassuring sound and made my heart melt. In fact, it made every crappy day and every morning spent in front of the toilet completely worth it. Check it out for yourself... How amazing is that?!
I keep hearing that I'll start to feel better in the 2nd trimester. I really hope so, because 6 more months feeling like this would be miserable for me, Charlie and everyone else that has to be around me. My poor co-workers have dealt with me puking in doggie poop bags long enough!
Jillian - Fearful Mama-to-be with a very busy schedule...
In the first several weeks of my pregnancy, I was a very busy bee. I took a trip with my college girlfriends to North Carolina, said goodbye to downtown Minneapolis and moved out of the condo we had owned for 6 years. We moved in with my parents for 3 weeks and I also celebrated my 31st birthday before we closed on our new home in South Minneapolis and started settling into our first "house."
Needless to say, it was a whirlwind of events. In the early days, I was feeling pretty good (besides my extremely sore boobs). I suffered from nausea pretty much the entire first trimester, but I never actually threw up. It was around 9 weeks that I first started spotting. We were at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre catching a performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and I'll never forget the fear that swept over me when I went to the bathroom and realized there was blood in the toilet.
The bleeding was contributed to a Subchorionic Hemorrhage that around 20% of pregnant women are diagnosed with. A much lower number experience the type of spotting and bleeding that I had, but luckily most of these hemorrhages are absorbed by the body as the pregnancy progresses. My spotting/blood continued for the next 6 weeks on nearly a daily basis. The 4th of July was an especially scary day for me and I will spare you the gory details. I had an almost paralyzing fear of miscarriage in the first trimester and this prevented me from really "embracing" the fact that I was pregnant and also prevented Eric and I from telling anyone outside of our close inner circle about the baby. My OB/GYN was great and I ended up having 3 ultrasounds in the first trimester and I also went in 3 different times besides that for fetal heart tone monitoring. Each time I heard that sweet little heartbeat it was such a great relief!
At my 14 wk appointment, I finally got to see this sweet profile that actually LOOKED like a baby!! :) It put everything into perspective and made the crappy first trimester totally worth it! One down.... 2 to go!!!!
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