Hooray and thank God, we've made it past the halfway mark. At the time of posting, I am now at 22 weeks, and still having a relative breeze of it, for which I'm very grateful.
At this point I thought it would be appropriate to look back for a moment at my first trimester.
Of course, it started off without me knowing I was in my first trimester - which, I suppose, is often the case. It wasn't until week 6 that I even suspected I was pregnant, week 9 before I knew for sure and week 13 until we knew how far along I was, and were ready to tell the world.
As soon as I seriously suspected being pregnant, I started reading up furiously about the dos and don'ts, especially regarding what I can eat. However this doesn't change a thing about what you eat (and drink) before you know you're pregnant - but a lot of the restrictions on a pregnant woman's diet is to try and avoid the absolute worst case scenario and the chances of something like an unpasteurized cheese actually causing a problem are very low. Alcohol can be more of a factor but luckily I'm not much of a drinker. I recall the odd glass of wine here and a shooter there but not enough to lie awake over, especially since Ziggy is looking a picture of health so far.
I was very lucky as far as common first trimester complaints go. I didn't have heartburn, cravings or morning sickness to speak of. I don't think I was particularly moody, either, but I am not sure I'm the best person to judge that ;)
The only morning sickness I had was three mornings in a row (at week 7) which was enough of a clue to make me do a pregnancy test (or, as it turned out, a series of tests). So I count that a blessing rather than a curse! I had the typical fatigue though, and let me tell you, unless you've experienced this yourself whatever you are imagining when I say "extreme fatigue", it's probably not quite accurate. I'd heard women talk about it before, but I had no idea I would have so little energy left by the time I got home from a day's work. I would literally flop onto the sofa, barely able to lift my head, and doze there on and off the entire evening. I was also constipated, which is fairly typical, but I won't share more than that on the subject, don't worry.
The two emotions I'll always associate most strongly with my first trimester are doubt and elation. Because I had a negative result on one of the three pregnancy tests I did, and a natural reluctance to take getting pregnant for granted due to my medical history, I found it very hard to go through the ups and downs of three pregnancy tests, a blood test, waiting for results, and then finally waiting for my gynae appointment to confirm how far along I was and that everything was looking ok. But when the doctor's office called on the Monday after my blood test and told me the results were positive, I felt as if I was going to explode from joy and relief. That is one of the happiest memories of my life so far, equalled only by my wedding day and topped only by the incredible mass of emotions I felt the first time the doctor put that baby up on the sonar machine's screen and I could see this little person growing inside me, and hear hir heartbeat. I was so overwhelmed with joy and gratitude.
There was also the relief of hearing that I was already 13 weeks along - relief for the most part that I was already past the most dangerous phase for miscarriage and such, and also a bit for the fact that we could finally tell the world this giant secret that had become the centre of our universe.
Now I'm well into my second trimester, and looking forward to the rest of this exhilarating ride, the end of which is only the beginning.
