Thank you for the outpouring of love and excitement for us as we’ve shared our news of our baby on the way and our gender reveal! It really does mean so much to us. I’m 19 weeks tomorrow, so I’m a little late on this post, but I’ve been dying to share more details about my first trimester to help answer all the questions that I’ve been getting asked. I’m compiling that today along with lots of photos… be prepared for a really long post!
Those of you who know me are probably not surprised to hear that I’ve been taking weekly photos of my bump, and I’ve even been taking weekly “fruit” pics… it sure is cool to have a visual representation of how fast the baby is growing each week. (Though I will spare you of those photos and just stick to the bump pics in this post!) The whole development process of a child in the womb is completely amazing – Jamie and I have said so many times how it seems impossible not to believe in God after experiencing the miracle of life.
Anyway, I guess I’ll just start going through some of the different topics to get you all up to speed. I don’t think there’s anything too personal that I’ll be sharing, but as a fair warning to anyone reading this, typical pregnancy topics will be discussed!
Getting pregnant: We were planning on starting to try for a baby in Fall 2020 after our trip to Germany for my friend Gianina’s wedding – that is, until COVID-19 rocked our world and cancelled their wedding and our trip. At that point, we just thought, what the heck and decided to start trying, because why not?! I had recently gotten off the pill a month or so before, so I was thinking it would take a little longer for us to get pregnant, but it surprisingly happened right off the bat. I was using an Ava bracelet to track my cycle (mostly because I was nervous about my cycle being all out of whack since I’d been on the pill for so long, and also because I’d heard such good things about the Ava bracelet), and it worked really well for us. I realize how fortunate we were to get pregnant right away this time around – we don’t know what it will be like for us the next time, but we feel thankful for having it go so smoothly this time.
Finding out and telling Jamie: By the time I could take a pregnancy test, I already had strong suspicions that I was pregnant. I had several nights in a row where I had really weird dreams that woke me up, and then I got up to pee right after, all of which are abnormal for me. I also distinctly remember taking my first bite of breakfast one morning and having this really strange metallic taste in my mouth. And then probably the most obvious symptom that I had early on was that there was this one day that I cried pretty much over nothing randomly (I was like, “I don’t know why I’m crying” and kept crying, haha), so Jamie and I were both speculating that some hormones were at play.
I took my first pregnancy test the day before we moved into our new home (it was positive!), and I waited two days before taking one more test and then shared the news with Jamie in our new home. (I had wanted to tell him the day after I found out, but due to the move and a certain box with a pregnancy test in it getting moved to the new house a day early, it didn’t happen, haha.) Looking back, I can’t believe that we were both finding out as we were moving into our home – so many changes in one week! But neither of us was completely shocked, and we were definitely excited. I actually got a video of me telling Jamie… it was easy to hide my recording phone up against some boxes on the first morning in our new home! He was very happy and it was sweet to get it on video. Here’s a photo we took together after I told him:
Telling our families: We told our parents when we were 6 weeks pregnant – we just couldn’t keep it from them! With my parents, we were taking a little family trip up to my grandma’s house – she lives on a lake, and I knew it would be hard to avoid drinking with them and not have someone guess that I was pregnant. We ended up telling them on a boat ride in the late afternoon – we were having hors d’oeuvres and wine, and I brought out a special bottle that we had hidden in a cooler:
When we brought it out, my mom screamed, my Nama said, “Is that what I think it is?!”, and my dad, not reading the label, said, “Oh, I should have brought a wine opener!” Then he read the label and started tearing up. Mike and Priscilla, my brother and sister-in-law, were also there, and they were at the front of the boat when we showed my parents the bottle. They were like, “What IS this bottle of wine that they are so excited about?!” and then we showed them and they were excited too. We caught it all on video! Not only will our baby be my parents’ first grandchild, but it will be Nama’s first great-grandchild, so it was really special.
We had a six-pack of beer for Mike and Priscilla that said, “A Baby is Brewing,” and for Nama, a bottle of wine with a label that said, “You Put the Great in Great-Grandma,” but unfortunately the wine label didn’t come in time for our weekend trip, so I had to give it to her later!
We told Jamie’s parents that weekend too – we were not able to tell them in person, but we Facetimed them and recorded their reactions as well! They were so excited and surprised since they thought we were going to show them the china cabinet that Jamie had recently gotten done painting. Baby V will be their fifth grandchild, and they love kids and were super happy to hear the news.
We told Mimi about the baby the following week at dinner at her house – we gave her a silver spoon that said “Great-Mimi.” She was pumped!
We knew we were going to see Jamie’s whole family at the end of July in Colorado, so we actually waited to tell anyone else until after we told Jamie’s siblings in person at 14 weeks (I know that’s the second trimester, but I’m lumping it into the first for the purpose of this post). To tell his family, Jamie pretended like he was going to take a picture of the family, when he was in fact recording. He told the group, “Everyone say, ‘Jessica’s pregnant!'” instead of “Everyone say cheese.” It was so funny to see everyone process the information and then say, “REALLY?!” They were excited that Sawyer, Finn, Hazel, and Duke will have another cousin to play with! The funniest thing is that Jamie’s sister and sister-in-laws all suspected it – Hope, his sister, even told his mom about 20 minutes before we told them that she thought I might be pregnant! We also had “maternity photos” taken in Colorado on this trip (I put that in quotes because I wasn’t showing very much, but I still wanted to get them taken in our favorite state!), and we love how they turned out. I will share more of those at another time!
Telling everyone else: We told our bosses in the second trimester, at 14 weeks (right after we told Jamie’s siblings), and shared with our friends and the rest of the world at 15 weeks. Everyone was surprised that we waited so long, but in the end, we were glad that we did, especially since it was our first.
Symptoms: I had crazy dreams and some mood swings, but have been very fortunate to avoid nausea throughout my pregnancy. I had nothing more than a slight queasiness occasionally, but it really wasn’t bad at all, and I just made sure to eat first thing in the morning and that seemed to help. I did experience fatigue for sure though – we spent a lot of time working on our home, and at night, I would go to bed feeling that I’d never been so tired in my life, like I’d just been up for 36 hours straight and been doing manual labor out in the sun or something! At the time, I knew pregnancy was playing a role in it, but I really thought that most of it was due to how hard we were working on the home… but I was wrong (we weren’t working THAT hard!!). Once my fatigue went away in the second trimester, I realized that it was ALL the pregnancy. I also had about one week of random tailbone pain, but thankfully that didn’t last long.
Cravings: I craved smoothies and fruit the most during the first trimester and mostly ate pretty healthy other than an occasional craving for fried food which I promptly satisfied! (I wasn’t quite as healthy in the second trimester… more on that in the next update, haha.)
Aversions: I didn’t really have any major food aversions, except that I ate so much salmon that I got tired of it by the end of the first trimester. My sense of smell is definitely more acute which isn’t necessarily the most fun, but luckily it hasn’t caused nausea in my case.
Weight: I pretty much stayed the same in the first trimester – maybe gained a pound, but I know the second trimester is really where you start gaining.
Clothes: I generally don’t wear a lot of tight tops, and my jeans still fit, so I was pretty much able to wear most of my regular clothes and hide the bump! My mom was nice to buy me two pairs of maternity jeans for when the time comes though!
Workouts: I continued to run (short runs, per my usual style), about once per week, and I did a little bit of pregnancy yoga and some back exercises.
Doctor visits: We went to the doctor at 7 weeks and got to see our baby for the first time! Although Jamie wasn’t allowed to come to the appointment due to COVID-19, he was able to come to the ultrasound, which was really nice. They actually told us that Baby V was measuring one week ahead, and that our due date would be January 23rd instead of January 29th like we had originally thought (this was why I skipped Week 8 of the bump pics!). At 11 weeks, we did Innatal testing, which checks for chromosome abnormalities and also identifies the gender if you want it to (we did, but chose to wait to have them tell us until the second trimester). I went to another appointment at 12 weeks, and the baby was healthy and well!
High points: Telling our family and friends was SO much fun, and seeing our little baby on the ultrasound was right up there too! Finally, finding out that our baby doesn’t have any chromosome abnormalities was such a blessing. We are praising God for keeping the baby healthy so far. We also got to celebrate Jamie’s first Father’s Day, which was exciting.
Low points: Being tired all the time when we were trying to get a lot done on the house was tough, and running while pregnant was a lot harder right off the bat than I anticipated! I wasn’t expecting that. Even though I hardly gained any weight in the first trimester, I was also disappointed that my face sure looks like it did!
Random: I would definitely say that I was in the “nesting” mindset, but during the first trimester, we didn’t start on the baby’s room at all. There was too much other stuff to do on our home, plus we waited to find out the gender before we started that project! Also, I jumped the gun a little bit and said goodbye to the first trimester a week early (Week 12 instead of Week 13). Oops! Overall, pregnancy has been pretty magical – it’s crazy to know that there’s a tiny human growing inside me! We are so very excited.
Feel free to let me know if you have questions that I haven’t answered or would like to share your own first trimester experiences!
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