It’s official, whether you favour a 12-week trimester, a 13-week trimester or a 13+3 week trimester, our first trimester with our little bubble is over, we are 13 weeks and 3 days pregnant.
T1, is done.
I’d love to say that I have loved my pregnancy to date, or, even that it has hit home that we two, are going to be three (as described here in ‘connect the dots‘), a somewhat strange out of body experience, where what that tiny little baby that you see on the screen doesn’t connect very well with the fact that it’s inside you. However, it’s been three and a smidge months of anxiety, worry and questions. It also doesn’t help that I’m clinically obese, which, brings with it, a slew of additional potential worries, but I’m working on ways to enjoy a ‘plus size pregnancy‘.
Most people envy me for not having had many symptoms (until around week 11), but I think there’s something calming about feeling miserable. It’s what you’re told that pregnancy should be like. ‘Sickness is normal, it means your baby is healthy’, ok, so because I’m not sick, does that mean my baby isn’t healthy? It’s ridiculous.
I peed on waaaaaay too many tests to be ‘average’, in my first six weeks, just to reassure myself that after all that time trying to get pregnant, we still were.
From the minute you walk in to the OB’s office, it’s all fear, fear and more fear. Y’know those adverts for medications? Those that give a huge list of potential adverse side effects at lightening speed at the end of the ad? Often including suicidal thoughts, and death?
Yeah, those. That’s kind of what it’s like. We went in for our ten week scan and were immediately confronted by everything that could possibly go wrong. We were given very little time (minutes, in fact) to process and decide how we wanted to proceed with regards to genetic defects and ailments, scans, testing etc.
We went in blissfully happy to visit our little bubble and our freakin’ bubble was burst when the doctor started talking. Talk about scare tactics! There was a time where people got pregnant and never had a single scan or knew anything was wrong until the ba was born. In part, I wish for those simpler times. This fear-mongering is all a bit much really.
Like I mentioned, I’ve not been very sick, I’ve had progressively worsening nausea, particularly in the evening and the reflux which haunted me for months, seems to be dissipating. I’ve had headaches (which I’ve attributed to dehydration and attempted to increase my fluid intake, mostly by chopping up oranges and sticking them in pints of iced water), exhaustion, ‘senior moments’.
The exhaustion is insane. Sleeping twelve + hours a night, plus naps? Apparently it takes a lot of energy to grow people! My house is in disarray. But we are almost caught up on laundry – that’s something, eh?
I’m sleeping well (and the peeing-during-the-night seems to have momentarily ceased), when I’m past-hungry (like STARVING) bubble gives me the hiccups and makes me eat. I’m finding it progressively more difficult to lie on my tummy (mostly cause I’m becoming more like Pamela Anderson in the cleavage department, every day).
I’ve had to convert from tablet vitamins, to gummy vitamins and all my other daily tablets (Vit D, Folic acid and metformin for my PCOS) have stopped. I can’t face them, I can’t swallow them and even the sight of the bottle makes me wretch and reach for the bedside bin and thankfully that one stray nosebleed, hasn’t made a reappearance.
I had previously thought baby brain was a myth, or at least something that wouldn’t ever happen to me, especially when I’m sleeping 12+ hours per night. Right? WRONG!
“Goodbye common sense. Goodbye intellect. Goodbye to the simple pleasure of remembering what I did 5 minutes ago, let alone last week.” (Brain be gone)
Baby brain has made the simplest of tasks, like remembering how to turn on the washing machine, feel like a huge achievement.
I did groceries? whoohoo! But, chances are, I’ll have forgotten the main ingredient for tonight’s dinner.
My brain is fuzzy, I go in to a room intending to do something and I totally forget what it was I went in for.
I’ll put my shoes on, ready to go out, having forgotten to either take my pj bottoms off, or put trousers on at all. Or, I’ll go out in my slippers, I’m classy like that.
Baby brain isn’t a myth. Lesson learned.
We have had 4 scans (6 weeks, 9 weeks 5 days, 10 weeks 5 days and our nuchal fold and translucency screening tests at 12 weeks 6 days). What is a nuchal fold and translucency scan? I hear the masses ask.
Currently the most accurate non invasive test for detecting Down syndrome during pregnancy is the measurement of the nuchal translucency with an ultrasound between 11 to 14 weeks of pregnancy. This is normally less than 2.5-3mm and when seen increased may indicate the baby has Down syndrome or may indicate another chromosomal abnormality.
The nuchal translucency test will also check whether your baby has a visible nasal bone. In the past few years it has been seen that approximately 3 in 4 babies with Down’s syndrome do not have a visible nasal bone at the time of the first trimester screening test. If the nasal bone is visible at the scan then this will reduce the chance of your baby having Down’s syndrome.
While we wait with baited breath to hear the results of this scan, there are some things that we could tell from the scan that have given us a little comfort. Firstly, the fluid around bubbles neck was around 1.7mm, his nasal bone was very clearly there and we were told he has a beautiful brain. Fingers crossed that results come back normal – the anxiety I felt for a few days before this scan was insane, though I kept trying to convince myself that we were just going to visit bubble and nothing more.
Col still thinks bubble is a girl, I have called bubble ‘he’ from the beginning, not because I believed him to be a boy, but to counter Col calling bubble ‘she’ all the time, to make it balanced and fair. Though the more I ‘bed in’ to this pregnancy, the more convinced I am that bubble will come out ‘gender blue’ and not pink. But we only have seven weeks til our big 20 week scan, so we can hopefully find out then (though going by how uncooperative bubble was last time we had a scan, I’m not sure this is gonna work out well for us! LOL!)
I also find that the US is very gender-polarised when it comes to babies, toys etc you can get neutral for the most part, however, clothes etc? It’s majoritively pink or blue. Quite frustrating really, especially if you have the UK mindset of ‘wait and see’.
Otherwise, all seems to be going well, at our appointment we got to visit bubble for a whole hour (because he wouldn’t stay still, stay in the right position, or show the sonographer what she wanted to see), which worked out well for Col and I, cause we got to see bubble ‘up close and personal’ for a long time. Fingers and toes, hands to face, flipping and turning and generally very unhappy at being poked, prodded and out-rightly shuggled like crazy into compliance.
Our next appointment is at just over 14 weeks with our OBGYN, hopefully at this one, I can keep some of my clothes on at least!
Things I’m told to look forward to: My dignity gone!