Pregnancy – First trimester recap

Hey party people ,

As you may know from my post about 2018 , I am pregnant :). I am very happy and feel blessed to become a mother in 2019. I am way further than first trimester now ( like late third trimester ha), but I love reading about pregnancies on other blogs so I have decided to document my pregnancy to share my little experience with you guys.

Just to remember the context, I used to do babies as a living : i.e. I was an obgyn resident when becoming pregnant. This meant I had some insights on how a pregnancy is supposed to go, but I also knew every pregnancy is different and I was very eager to experience it on my own. Being a resident in the field and seeing pregnant women every day also encouraged me to try and get pregnant during my residency. For starters, I know how difficult it can be to conceive ( I am very interested in the fertility field), and my boyfriend had always told me he wanted to have a child the sooner the better. I always wanted to be a resident before becoming a mother, but as soon as I became a resident and we got settled ( meaning, we bought a house ^^) , we were kind of ready to try to conceive.

How did you find out you were pregnant?

Honestly, it was quite a surprise. We were trying since 8 months and since during that time I never had regular cycles, I just took pregnancy tests every other week or so ^^ after the 3 first weeks of any cycle. You get borderline obsessed when you’re trying, believe me.

I was actually convinced that I had a sort of PCOS syndrom or something similar the month I became pregnant and therefore felt kind of defeated and could, not think about being pregnant one bit.

On a saturday morning I just felt kind of blah you know, and because I was already doing tests every other week I just thought why not. I was really really shocked when I saw two bright pink lines ^^ . But it was the best feeling ever, I felt so relieved to be pregnant and so blessed!

How did you tell the father ?

It wasn’t anything fancy because, well the day I found out I was pregnant, my inlaws where at home and it was my mother-in-laws birthday. I really wanted my boyfriend to know before everybody was suspicious, so I kind of tried to sneak him out of breakfast but it was not a really subtle move. I came down from our bedroom and said after saying hello to my inlaws , um I need a private talk with the boyfriend. So not subtle haha.

At first he didn’t really understood the matter, but when I showed him the pregnancy test he seemed really happy about it !

How did you tell your friends/ family ?

Starting with my inlaws : we had a scheduled restaurant that night . Before going I organized a little ” apéro” time at home were I gave some gifts to my mother in law for her birthday. She received a nice basket , and inside I hid a card that said, happy birthday , PS : 1+1 = 3 . Which of course meant I was pregnant.

She was really very very happy , I did not believed it, I honestly should have filmed the moment because it was nice that she was so happy for us!

What were your first pregnancy symptoms?

Not much honestly. I found out pretty quickly that I was pregnant , maybe around week 4 or 5 of being pregnant. The first little sign I could recognize was some mild sensibility in my nipples. After I knew , I remarked it very much more. Before, I remember telling myself that the nipple sensibility was weird, but I just thought my hormones were all over the place ^^

After that I had two pretty uneventful weeks and then the fatigue and the nausea hit me hard. Nothing impossible though thank god. I could still function normally, go working 12+ hours everyday like a classical obgyn resident does, that was a relief.

What was your first reaction to your pregnancy ?

Happiness, of course !! Here is a picture of a sonogram I dit to myself ( one of the perks of being an obgyn resident :)). This is like 7 weeks pregnant. The white line you can see in the middle of the baby is his spine developing, how cool is that ?

How did first trimester went in general ?

Honestly, pretty good. It was really difficult to hide it , you just wanna share the news with the whole world !! But it was alright. Nausea was not so good , but it just did not bother me that much. I was honestly so busy with work that I did not notice that much. Somedays were harder than others, but ginger tea and some crackers often did the trick for me. Small portions helped too. I would have loved to nap, but difficult at a hospital .. seriously ^^

Other than that we just took it day by day and I tried to rest the best I could on week-ends I had off.

I had two weeks off work, one in june and then another one in july and that most certainly helped too. I felt pretty good after the 8th week of pregnancy too , fatigue and nausea disappeared quite soon.

I was really sad that veggies were so disgusting at that stage^^

How did first trimester go at work ?

Better than I thought. 24 hour calls were difficult, I cannot deny it. But then I was in midst of changing career path ( I transferred from obgyn residency to family practice residency), so people were already aware I was not going to go to the OR any more and I tried to avoid L&D the most I could after the third month of pregnancy.

As soon as everybody knew I was pregnant my colleagues made life a little easier for me : I was taking rounds on the gynecology/surgery service rather than being in the OR itself and I helped were everyone needed me. But knowing I was preggo + I was changing career paths meant that everyone was taking care of me which was honestly nice.

Any food aversions / cravings ?

Craving : pizzaaaaa : all the time everyday , honestly

Aversions: warm food, veggies, red meat . but it became quickly better.

And that’s all for today; I’ll come back soon for my second trimester recap!

Tell me have you already been pregnant ? If you have did you experience some symptoms during first trimester ?