Reflections on the 1st Trimester

I am now 13 weeks and 6 days pregnant, which means I am on the last day of my first trimester. [1] Here’s what I see looking back:

Most Favorite Parts of the First Trimester:

• Taking my daughter to watch videos at EHD.org and observing her excitement as we discussed her forthcoming brother or sister (“or BOTH!” she would say). 
• Feeling the baby begin to move. (Oh yeah. That’s been happening.)
• Hearing the baby’s heartbeat. 
• My first appointment with my hot doctor. 

I also hit an important milestone not too long ago: last Friday, when I hit 13 weeks, my chances of miscarriage in the miscarriage calculator dropped down from 5% to 2%. That’s as low as the risk goes regardless of age, gestation, previous deliveries, previous miscarriages, heartbeat, and HCG levels, so there’s something reassuring about crossing that threshold.

Least Favorite Parts of the First Trimester

• Nausea, fatigue, and that one morning of vomiting (yes, I know I’m lucky)
• Being too tired to exercise. 
• Feeling like I didn’t want to eat anything.
• Outgrowing some non-maternity clothes, but still being too thin for most maternity clothes. 
• Achy, hurtie, breasts that are bigger. I went up 1 cup size and 1 band size within the first month of pregnancy. No, I am not happy about this. “Mine’s bigger” is not a goal for women!

Overall, this is one trimester that I am not sorry to leave behind. I’ve actually exercised twice this week though (Monday and this morning), and I’ve applied for a YMCA membership for the pool access, so I think my energy is beginning to return. Here’s hoping the second trimester is better than the first!

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[1] A lot of sources say that the 1st trimester ends at the end of week 12 and beginning of week 13, or a week ago. However, my feelings are that if we’re going to evenly divide a 40-week pregnancy into trimesters, it’s 13/13/13 and then one trimester gets an extra week. Since a woman isn’t even really pregnant during the first two weeks of the first trimester, I say it’s the first trimester that should get that extra week. So my division is 14/13/13. TheBump.com seems to agree with me.

Status of Human Being Under Construction: 25% Complete

Yup, I am 10 weeks pregnant today. If a pregnancy is 40 weeks long, then I am 25% done with it. I can do what I just did three more times, right? . . . Right?

Of course, in reality, pregnancy lasts ~38 weeks, so I’m not really 25% done until 11 weeks + 3.5 days (because that’s really 9 weeks + 3.5 days). But, whatever. If doctors are going to insist on counting those two weeks before I got pregnant, I can, too.

My symptoms so far:

• An occasional excess of stretchy, stringy, white (sometimes yellow-tinged) cervical mucus. It’s a bit like egg-white cervical mucus, but cloudier and not clear. It looks exactly like snot. That snot funny.
• Fatigue. It’s been better since my doctor put me on a low dosage of levothyroxine for my sub-clinical hypothyroidism, but it’s still there.
• Twinges, tugging sensations and (very rarely) even cramping in my abdomen or lower back.
• I had one morning of repeat vomiting, at 7+1. My stomach was empty and it was all water and phlegm, and then it was dry heaving. Since then I’ve tried to make sure I have at least a little bit of food in my stomach at all times (even if it’s just crackers or something), and that seems to be working. I haven’t thrown up since. (The only time I threw up during DD’s pregnancy was when my stomach was empty, so I think that’s a thing with me.)
• One morning of mild pink, barely-there spotting following very vigorous coitus. 
• Nausea. Almost all the time. I know I won’t throw up, but I just don’t feel well and don’t feel like eating. I am hoping to God that the placenta will kick in soon and give me some relief.
• I have no visible bump yet (I’m 6’0″; I tend to hide pregnancy well), but I can feel pressure in my abdomen when I lay on my stomach.

Hot doctor called me up yesterday, but I missed his call. His message said that I was right about my blood being Rh-negative (duh) and he wanted to talk to me about what that means. I’m very curious to hear what it is he thinks he needs to tell me, because as I understand it, I won’t need a RhoGam shot until we do an amniocentesis (~16 weeks?) or 28 weeks if we decide not to do amnio. I’m hoping I’ll get lucky and the amnio will tell me that baby is Rh-negative so that I won’t need any more shots at 28 weeks or after delivery. Anyways, there’s no reason he couldn’t wait until our appointment the first week of March (when I’ll be 11+6) to talk to me about Rh-negative blood. So why he be dialing me up?

Maybe he misses me and he wanted an excuse to hear my sexy voice. I’m gonna go with that.

FREAK OUT

My day did not start well. I woke up at 4:30 AM to pee, and decided to use up my last pregnancy test just for giggles. Got a solid positive, not even faint this time, so okay, I guess that much of my day started well, but I had trouble going back to sleep after that, tossing and turning and maybe dozing off a bit until 5:30 AM. I decided to temp early at that point, then looked in horror as the thermometer read 97.78° F, which would be a -.66° F from yesterday. That strikes me as a really steep drop! Still above my coverline, but steep. I scowled and went back to tossing and turning and dozing and temped again at 6:20 AM, closer to my usual time. 98.15° F, still a drop, but not so steep. That might be cheating, but I’m taking it.

Why am I still temping when I have several positive home pregnancy tests? Because I like the feel of a nice, cold thermometer up my cooch at the crack of dawn, obviously. No, I’m just neurotic and if I’m going to be done with Fertility Friend, I want my charts to reflect two 37-day cycles. So I’m temping for 7 more days and then calling it quits.