12/30/2004 Archived Entry: "12W 3D"

What's been going on so far...

This contains some bodily function descriptions, not particularly explicit, but if you're not comfy with any of that stuff, then read at your own risk.

Life so far in the first trimester. I could say that it's not too bad, though I remember times when I was well and truly fed up with it. Of course it could have been worse, so I'm thankful it wasn't.

For the first few weeks, there wasn't really much difference to life as usual, except the no period part. As weeks 5 and 6 made themselves known, a couple of things started changing. First there was the advent of "morning" sickness, another one of those topics that, like the search for a midwife, already has a text file and will be unleashed soon enough.

Morning sickness was a pain, even though that's one of the things that numerous women have way worse than me. However when you feel queasy or nauseous for every waking moment, for weeks in a row, just feeling like a normal being becomes something you sometimes fear you'll never feel again. It becomes your Holy Grail, the thing you fear you might never find, the thing you fear might not even be real. In the darkest moments of it you do sometimes wonder why the hell women do this more than once, and you think to yourself that this baby better be really damn cute after all of this, and that which is yet to come. It's still an ongoing thing, though during the day I'm now mostly fine, and usually it's just the mornings and evenings that have me feeling squicky.

Around the time that the morning sickness kicked in, maybe even a week earlier or so, I also became acutely aware of where my uterus was. Now usually it's like most other internal organs, you know it's there, but you don't really ever notice it being there (menstruation was never a horrible crampy mess for me, I was lucky). However, once there's something inside growing constantly and needing more space, it makes itself known. Apparantly cramping/contracting isn't uncommon, and so occasionally it does that. Mostly you just feel it when you move in certain ways, anything that compresses the abdomen, like sitting up or certain positions in which you might sit or recline etc. Nothing too major, but it's quite strange to be so aware of an internal organ like that.

Then there's the breasts. Sometimes tender, sometimes hypersensitive, sometimes just like normal. It's like an everchanging weathervane. They've also gotten bigger, and this also happened starting around the week 6 mark or so. I doubt I've actually gone up a full cup size yet, though I could probably chance trying on a larger cup bra and fill most of it out, but things have definitely noticeably filled out in my existing bras. Well, mostly noticeable when I'm not wearing stuff or to the touch, not super visible through average daily wear (especially not in winter). Hopefully they're not going to keep growing at this steady pace for the next 6.5 months, or else they'll be gigantic when the kid arrives... like 'more appropriate on a bovine' kind of gigantic.

So far no peeing like a maniac, which some people suffer from in the first trimester, and according to some 'timeline' sites should start ease up now that the womb is moving up out of the pelvic basin into the lower abdomen and no longer compressing the bladder as much. But I'm sure that eventually that peeing thing will become an issue regardless. It has become a little harder to pee as freely as it used to be, slightly more pressure required to fully empty the bladder.

I am finding it hard to drink the 2-3 liters a day of water/fluid that are recommended. I'm not much of a liquid consumer anyway, so this requires real effort on my part.

Oh yes, the tiredness. Lots of lethargy during the day, the desire to nap sometimes not hours after you've woken up from an 8-10 hour sleep. Usually though I resist the urge to nap, I don't really want to screw up my sleeping pattern. The tiredness, like the nausea, should ease off in the second trimester. Or so the pregnancy timeline sites tell me.

Other nuggets of information include the fact that the placenta is almost fully formed, and in a week or 2 will take over the duties of providing nutrition and oxygen which is currently being taken directly from my bloodstream.

I also apparantly have about 30-50% more blood volume in my body than usual, and my heart is working up to 40% or so harder.