Lafeenoire Maternity’s Weblog

The truth about the First Trimester

It has to be the longest 12 weeks of your entire life… !!firstly you wait with bated breath to do a test, (in my case I was waiting to do Ovulation test 11 days after my first day of my period!) Then I realised it was actually too late!!

Of course at this point you are constantly checking your pants for your period. Convinced you are just under the weather, you end up doing about 5 tests before finally accepting the result. I mean, how can I get caught after trying for just 8 months, I was on the pill for 19 years for goodness sakes!

Then when you get a big fat positive result you wander round the house going ‘oh my god!! . You call your surgery, make an appointment to see doc and midwife the following week. The receptionist laughs at you when you ask her to confirm that 5 positive tests are definitely conclusive, aren’t they?

Then without warning you start spotting and cramps begin almost seconds after you break the good news to your other half! Pregnant for one day? Surely not!

You then spend the next 3 weeks checking pants (again!), this time hoping NOT to see blood! Could make a girl go mad!

Then, your boobs bloat but that’s ok because you usually have no boobs at all!. Sadly the downside to your nice new rounded pair means they are sore, sensitive as hell and seriously out of bounds to your other half!!

Your other half is going around with a grin on his face, enjoying ‘our secret’. Well he doesn’t have to go pee 30 times a day or worry about throwing up every time you cough or sneeze, does he?!

The spotting and general gunge subsides and your midwife comes over for her visit, your scan is booked and you still feel like you only control your head and feet and that someone else has taken over your body!

She is absolutely lovely and really puts you at your ease. When the question of breast feeding comes up you instantly have a shooting pain through your left nipple and wonder if that would be a wise move at all! Eventually she sells the idea to you with the line about getting your figure back quicker! That does it ! Sold to the lady with her head down the pan! They are very shrewd these ladies!

You are gradually getting a taste for ginger in any form whatsoever (that’s all you can taste at all, apart from metal that is!!) You would rather be strung up than leave the house without your sick bands on…gone are the days when that applies to the right handbag or lippy!

Then, your guts begin to bloat to match your swollen breasts, firstly just after food then oddly all the time!? Suddenly your relatively flat tummy is meeting people before you are! This is getting increasingly difficult to hide now. Roll on scan!!!

Its month 3 and you start to feel slightly better!?? Oh my god, are you still pregnant? Oh good, I feel a bit sickly again, that’s ok then! Never have you almost willed yourself to feel dicey. How weird is that!?

With all the stretching, retching , farting and poo-ing going on, you are no longer a nice person to stand down-wind of!!

All this and still you are not totally convinced this could possibly be caused by just 3mm of baby! Honestly! Does the fact that they are capable of this mass destruction at 3mm bode well for the next two trimesters? I mean, as they grow even more, what the hell can they do to your poor defenceless body then!!

Roll on two weeks for the 12 week scan and then you can finally spill beans to family! Some close and well loved sympathetic girlfriends already know but mainly because they know you well enough to have guessed and they will be there for you if anything should go wrong :-/ , or you need to have some outlet to vent your spleen from time to time (whilst it still works under your own control that is!)

I Hope this puts a smile on your faces ladies as its time to lighten the mood and enjoy this experience,

Onwards and OUTWARDS!!!…………….

Sadly I cannot detail the next two trimesters of this tale as unfortunately this experience ended in a half suspected miscarriage. Discovered at 12 weeks scan but know in my heart to have occurred at around 7 weeks , I can happily conclude to say that I now have a beautiful and energetic daughter, Thea Josephine who is my life, my future and my world. She has not replaced my lost Angel but is his or her sister and one day the two will reunite. I am in awe at her resilience, and defiance I might add, but mostly at her complete trust in me as her mummy. I vow to always be there for her but to let her grow into the rounded self confident being she deserves to be. Often I wonder at her intrigue in the small things, like a spider inching its way up the wall, or the way our dog snores in his sleep. I know she will be a “Y” child like I was and I hope I can come up with a more satisfactory answer than my mummy did, which was “Z”.

Thanks for reading, and I hope smiling!

Rachel

info@lafeenoire.com

www.lafeenoire.com

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