Is the first trimester over?

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
#1

So far, being pregnant is a pain. The nausea is not as bad as I thought it would be, but I get these splitting headaches (which the doctor says are normal) and I’m afraid to take anything for them (forgot to ask what’s safe to take :smack: ).

The worst part is my mood. I’m prone to depression with a little anxiety thrown in just to make things interesting. Medication helps, but I’m not taking anything right now. The uncertainty at work is driving me mad. Then there are the overwhelming concerns about being a good parent, will the kid be health, etc. Questions and doubts about finishing my degree and continuing my career won’t go away. I’ve been avoiding my friends, in part because I’m embarrassed about being my condition and partially because I’m an emotional bitch bitch right now. This behavior makes me feel isolated and lonely. (Depression doesn’t follow any sort of logic. sigh)

This week I have another doctor’s appointment. I have a whole list of questions and plan on talking about what sort of anti-depressant would be safe. Just ranting right now.

#2

My two cents, quit avoiding your friends. Tell your friends what you just told us "I’m pregnant, it’s messing with my emotions and adding to an already stressful situation. Can we just get together and do stuff so I don’t feel so isolated? Promise you won’t hold my emotions against me? "
You can certainly provide more detail than that if you want to, and if it is appropriate to your friendship. But I think you might benefit from just acting “normal” and socializing. Certainly talk to your doctor about how your pregnancy hormones influence your existing mood problems. But if your friends are really your friends, and if they have any experience with pregnant women, they’ll be willing to forgive some of your mood issues and just be there for you.

#3

Its hard. One of my friends has been trying for months to conceive, and I got knock up with no effort. Another one has a lot of pets: cat, dogs, mice, hampsters, turtles. I’ve been trying to meet with her somewhere outside her home, but she won’t do it. I mentioned that cats and rodents carry diseases that can effect me or the mouseling and she dismisses it as being overly cautious. This woman has been a good friend to me for many years, but unless she agrees to gather elsewhere, I can’t see her. :frowning:

#4

That does make it harder. And I am certainly not qualified to give advice on dealing with either of those issues. I don’t know why I assumed that your friends were able/willing/eager to do things with you and you were avoiding them because of silly/exaggerated fears/hormones/etc.

Probably tells you something about me.

#5

Thanks for the advise. I do appreciate it. :slight_smile:

#6

My doctor and midwife say Tylenol is okay, but not ibuprofen or aspirin or naproxen. I’m really headache-prone, too, so that was about the first question I asked!

How many weeks are you? I’ve found that for the nausea, it really helps if I actually eat (which is sooo counter-intuitive for me), especially if I have a little protein.

I don’t know what to tell you about your friends – that sucks! Can you have your friend with the animals over to your house? Tell her about a great restaurant you’ve heard about and see if she’ll join you? Your friend who is trying to conceive… that’s a little trickier. I know of women in her situation who wouldn’t want to know, and I know of women who would absolutely want to know, even if it hurts, and do their best to be happy for you. You might try to tell her gently now, because it might be worse if you tell her once you’re already showing, etc., and your fertility is more “in her face.” Tell her that you understand that it might be hard for her and that you love her and hope this won’t affect your friendship, but that you also understand if she needs some space – ask her to be gently honest with you, too, so that maybe you hang out but don’t talk about baby/pregnancy stuff.

The stress is hard, isn’t it? The little person-to-be is always in the back of my head! I’m working on making more time for myself, for relaxing and vegging, and doing what I can to turn off my brain (not an easy thing for me to do!). But I have to remind myself that worrying doesn’t actually accomplish anything, and that some of these things on my mind are just going to have to work themselves out at a later date – I mean, I have no control over the genetic health of my child. It sucks that something I’ve wanted for so long isn’t all fun and games. Everyone assumes that you’re all a-twitter with joy, when you’re frequently a bundle of nerves and worries! I hope you can find some method of relaxing and enjoying the fun parts of pregnancy! (Everyone says it gets better from here…)

#7

Much joy to you and Mr Mouse! Sorry about the feelings, tho.

At some point you will realize there is someone more important than anyone else around you and it’s both liberating and scary but it can make some things easier to cope with. It’s not a cop-out and you can relax a bit while loosening the reins you grasp so hard now. It’s no ‘get-out-of-jail free’ card to let all things go to pot, but someone else needs you now and you are better for them if you relax and like yourself more now.

You’ve never struck me as a crazed high maintenance person so you may need to be gentler with yourself. Can’t hurt and I know the doctor won’t advise against it.

2 cents from one who’s been there.

#8

That’s good to know! Relief at last. :slight_smile:

I’m eight-ish weeks. Hopefully, my doc will give me a better estimate. You’re right, eating when feeling sick is counter-intuitive, but I’ll give it a try. Today is my birthday, and I’m going out to my favorite resturant for some crawfish etouffee ( as authentic as you can get here in Colorado.) I want to enjoy it, since its a once-a-year treat.

Nice to know that I’m not strange for being stressed out. Right now, work stress is eating me up. My job has been in jepardy for months, and things are looking really bad right now. (Rumor has it that the private non-profit section of our building wants to throw us out.) Job hunting is always difficult, and searching for work while pregnant looks like a sisyphean task.

#9

This will kill many birds with one stone - call your friend(s) and ask them to meet you for a walk. You’ll chat & catch up while you walk (indoors @ the Mall if it’s still too cold to walk outside), the exercise will help w/ the depression and you’ll be famished enough to quell the nausea. (Cinnabon anyone?)
That’s the multi-animal pal **and ** the ‘trying-hard-to-conceive’ pal, 'cause I’ll bet she’ll be past any real jealousy soon if not already. If she’s a worthwhile friend (I’ll bet she is!), she’ll be more disappointed if the pregnancy comes between you like this.
Mouse Maven, I’ve seen my friends with kids disappear into their new child-filled lives and have no time for grown ups even when they wanted it; enjoy your time with your friends while you can! In a few months, you’ll have to start putting them much further down the priority list.

#10

Happy birthday and congratulations!

Have you considered a pregnancy support message board? I went through about the same when I was pregnant and I found a great group of buddies online that were due the same month as me. It was kinda fun comparing notes, and many of us still get together online and in person two years later.

#11

“Today is my birthday, and I’m going out to my favorite resturant for some crawfish etouffee ( as authentic as you can get here in Colorado.) I want to enjoy it, since its a once-a-year treat.”

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOUSE_MAVEN!!!
I hope you have a fun night!

#12

Happy Birthday! We have more and more in common – my birthday is the 21st. :slight_smile:

One thing about the Tylenol – the sheet my MW gave me says no more than 2000mg/day. Just FYI.

Maybe, to help with stress, you can create little milestones for yourself? Things to look forward to? I’m just talking (well, typing) off the top of my head here, but I have my 2nd OB appointment on the 15th. We should be able to hear the baby’s heartbeat then (there had better be only ONE heartbeat!), and as it gets closer I am getting more and more excited. Maybe you can set dates for you to do something fun for yourself once a week or so – like, this Friday let yourself get a little something you’ve been wanting, baby-related or not. Like a baby name or pregnancy book, or a wee little outfit, or a manicure. That way, you have a positive thing to focus on throughout the week, and it might help you think about the fun things more than the scary things.

For work stuff… that’s hard. I am a planner by nature, so the feeling of being in limbo would drive me nuts. If I were in that situation, it would help me to have a plan for what I would do if the worst happened. That way I could feel I had a little control over my reaction, even if though I couldn’t control the situation. Having a plan wouldn’t remove the stress completely, but at least I would know I’d done what I could, y’know? Even if it’s a plan for you being unemployed, or taking a part-time job until the baby comes, maybe it would help if you sat down with Mr. Maven and talked through your different options.

Also, the fatigue will get better, too, and maybe then a job hunt won’t seem so daunting! We are packrats, and started weeding out some crap a few weeks ago. Y’know how you have to make a mess in order to get things clean sometimes? Well, we did, and then the super-fatigue hit me. So the place is still a mess, and it makes me tired just thinking about weeding stuff out. It’s just going to have to wait a few more weeks (I’ll be 11 weeks tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll be feeling better in 2-3 weeks), and I just can’t beat myself up. My main job at home right now is growing this baby!

You’re a smart, resourceful woman – you will figure out what to do about this. Have faith!

And have a great birthday! :slight_smile:

#13

Pregnancy did two great things for SiL (not counting The Nephew himself):

  • fixed her periods
  • taught her that the worst possible outcome is NOT the most probable one.

She spent the whole 9 months going over the yuckiest parts of her gyne and ped books… if maternal stress produced premature babies, The Nephew would have been born at 4 months!

#14

Hi!
I was cross with all my friends who had told me being pregnant was a wonderful experience. They lied! It sucks! Actually, the first three months do, then it really does get better. I took paracetamol for all the pains and any fever. As for nausea, try eating BEFORE you get out of bed. Have some dry crackers or biscuits next to the bed and eat them before you move. It sounds weird but it does help. So does ginger, drink it in an infusion if you can. Infact, ginger biscuits are the best thing to have next to the bed!
Your hormones should settle down soon, in about four weeks you will be feeling much better. Really!

#15

Wow. You sound like me last year!

My husband and I planned our pregnancy, so I was able to ask my OB about anti-depressants before I ever got pregnant. I have been on Lexapro for years. My OB asked me if I thought I really needed it, or if I could do without for the duration. Hah! I’m really glad I stayed on it, because I had some huge emotional upheavals while I was pregnant (my brother died, our cat died, my husband lost his job, etc.). If it hadn’t been for my Lexapro, I don’t know what I would have done. There were days when I had to close the door to the nursery and pretend that I didn’t have this basketball in my belly because if I thought too much about “what kind of life can we give this baby?” I would have been unable to get out of bed. But I had to get out of bed, because my husband lost his job, and my boss cut my hours.

Is there someone you can be totally 100% honest with in regards to your feelings of uneasiness? [If you need someone (relatively) anonymous to vent/rage/cry too, my email is my username at yahoo dot com.] I would type long letters in MS word about how much of a wreck I was and then delete them so no one would see them. But it felt really good to get the words out of my head.

I can’t help you with the morning sickness thing, because I didn’t have any.

#16

<wearing T-Shirt> I Survived Pregnancy</wts>

The first few months of my pregnancy, my body completely betrayed me. I was emotional, stressed out, dizzy, anxious, terrified and a high risk pregnancy.

You’ll soon get to the point where you are ok being pregnant, you get used to it. The nausea should subside as you enter into the glory months of pregnancy, you are big enough to look pregnant, not throwing up and not a candidate for floating down the Macy’s Parade.

The serious betrayal comes later, although I was fortunate that I didn’t experience the last agonizing month and had a tiny daughter (4lbs 12oz).

Understand this: Your body does not give a crap about you. It will move, shift, grow, distort to accomodate some tiny little creature that it just met. I seriously felt like I was merely the vessel for my daughter because god knows, what I wanted my body to be doing certainly wasn’t an issue. I like to think my daughter ruled my life from conception.

If this is your first…I so envy you. You are not just heading down the path to having a baby. You are heading down the path to being a Mom. Being a Mom is great. I’ll never forget when my daughter was born and how fiercely protective of her I became. How curious, how amazed. My first words to her were “I want five more just like you.”

Repeat after me: “I’m the Mommy, I win.”

Sit back and enjoy the show. Your body is gonna do what it is gonna do. You are just along for the ride, the payoff is insanely worth it.

-AB, who is now packing her shit to sell her house to move to the country so her daughter can one day have a pony if she decides she wants one. Also so she can climb trees and play in the woods, and be outside and well…have a perfect childhood.

#17

It all sucked. Don’t sugar coat it.

The first trimester is filled with morning sickness, sore breasts, overwhelming tiredness, stress, constant hunger and the need to pee every three minutes.

The second trimester - the glory days of a preganancy - can be almost reasonable IF YOU MANAGE TO AVOID A HORRIBLE COLD. However, you will get the cold of your life and not be able to take any of the really cool cold medications. The cold will last six weeks and include bronchitis. You will still need to pee every three minutes. You’ll stop fitting into your clothes - and you’ll get invited to a summer wedding with nothing to wear - and be too cheap to buy a maternity dress you’ll wear once. Complete strangers start to ask you invasive questions and give you more invasive advice.

The third trimester is all about “no matter how much labor hurts, I want this out of here NOW.” You are now the size of a bull elephant. You still pee every three minutes. You sleep in the lazy boy because you can no longer lie down, and because your husband is going to kill you because you have to get up every three minutes all night long to pee (don’t worry, this is nature’s way of getting you ready for a baby who gets fed four times a night). Getting out of a chair becomes a nightmare - you thought yoga was hard before you got pregnant? Getting out of bed makes you wonder why someone doesn’t just put a cathater in you. There is a point where you no longer fit behind the wheel of your car while being able to reach the gas pedal. You can’t fit more than a donut, but are always hungry. And - just for fun, you start to outgrow that maternity clothes.

#18

I have another fun pregnancy symptom to add to Dangerosa’s very accurate description…it’s called “rhinitis of pregnancy,” and basically means that my nasal passages have swelled up so much that I can’t breathe through my nose. This means that at night, I am either snoring or breathing so loudly, I “sound like Darth Vader,” according to my husband, and that my mouth is like the sahara desert pretty much all the time.

I am also looking forward to my ankles swelling up like tree trunks, which happened with my first pregnancy and I’m sure is waiting for me a month or so down the line.

All that being said, I think the first trimester is definitely the worst…I couldn’t eat a thing for 4 solid months (although have been making up for lost time since then!)

#19

I had a perfectly wonderful pregnancy. No morning sickness. One fainting spell. No swelling. He arrived on his due date. And I walked out of the hospital carrying only ten extra pounds, and 5.5 of those pounds were Kid Kalhoun! It was awesome!

#20

I do have to say that I was lucky in that regard…I don’t seem to gain a lot of “extra” weight. After my baby was born, I pretty much looked the same as before I got pregnant (at least, with my clothes on!)