{Baby3} Bumpdate: 6-13 weeks/1st Trimester

With the 1^st trimester well behind us now, I feel like it’s finally time for an update. Okay, okay, I more realize that if I don’t write some of this down soon I will start to forget bits and pieces and I have actually loved being able to look back here on my previous pregnancies. So here goes:

1^st trimester (Oct-Dec, weeks 1-13)

Early November I started to have a hunch that I might be pregnant, but I was in a bit of denial (and honestly didn’t want to get my hopes up) until around 6 weeks (mid-November) when I started feeling pretty terrible, which you wouldn’t think is a good thing, but it is.

I’ll pause here to say: we had a miscarriage in early September (I was 7/8 weeks pregnant). It was really difficult at the time, but we got through it and now I’m okay talking about it. That said, that experience has definitely had an effect on this pregnancy. It made me be much more hesitant to be excited when I started thinking I might be pregnant again. It has also made me more cautious with sharing news with people, especially early on (and even later on too, if I’m being honest). Miscarriages are funny things. Rationally I understand it wasn’t my fault, there’s nothing I could have done differently, our baby is hanging out in heaven right now with God, that the baby – no matter how small – mattered, was important, and will not be forgotten, etc. etc. etc….but miscarriage still changes you. I’ve been learning that a ton of people I know have had miscarriages. I’ve been trying to be as open as possible to talking about it now because that’s what I really needed (hearing from friends who had been in the same boat) when I was going through it.

So like I said before, I had a *feeling* earlier than 6 weeks that I might be pregnant, but I didn’t want to believe it yet. I also had a weird marker stuck in my head, that I didn’t even want to “know” if I was really pregnant before 7 weeks, because that’s when I miscarried last time. I realize this sounds kind of nuts because what are the odds of miscarrying again on the exact same day, but I was clinging onto that thought and so I waited until I was about 7 weeks (on Thanksgiving day, 11/22) to take a test, and sure enough, it was positive!

We happened to have a ton of stuff going on right around this time (before I took the test), so between that and my denial, it was actually pretty easy to ignore that I might be pregnant. We closed on our house the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, celebrated turkey day, and then moved the following weekend and things were pretty much chaos for the next few weeks.

On 12/5 (8.5 weeks) we went to our first doctor’s appointment & got to see our baby with a sonogram. This was a pretty emotional visit because the last time we had a sonogram we learned that I was miscarrying, so there was his huge moment of anticipation as they were setting up and then absolute relief when we saw & heard the baby for the first time:

On 12/9 Taylor ran (and completed) the Dallas Half Marathon!

Over the next few weeks we tried to unpack and settle in as best we could. Taylor and his dad rented scaffolding one weekend and replaced a really high chandelier and a really high ceiling fan.

We tried to get as many boxes out of our house as possible.

We even finally managed to put up a few Christmas decorations – 10 days before Christmas. Better late than never I guess, but my current mantra is: don’t ever move into a new house between Thanksgiving and Christmas because it’s the absolute worst and you WILL NOT want to put up Christmas decorations in the midst of trying to unpack your life.

Right around the 12-week mark, we started letting Arden & Turner in on the fact that they were going to have a baby brother or sister and while Turner didn’t have a clue, Arden started telling people at school “I want a baby sister because I already have a brother” (add in an imaginary eye roll and “duh). At this point we didn’t know if the baby was a boy or girl, but we did have the blood test done & were awaiting the results.

We celebrated Christmas at home over the weekend & with Taylor’s family at a cabin in Oklahoma, and the entire time (including all weeks prior) I felt pretty awful. 

I had “morning sickness” (ie all day nausea) with both previous pregnancies, but man it was worse this time. I think the nausea was worse with Arden than with Turner, so I started to feel like this baby might be a girl, but we still hadn’t heard back to confirm either day. I basically felt sick all day every day. It was especially bad if I let myself get hungry, so I tried to more or less eat every hour or so, but the only things I could eat were pretty bland (think BRAT diet), so we lived off of pasta, toast, and rice. I couldn’t handle food smells (or even thinking about food) so we basically lived off takeout for 2 months. My poor family probably didn’t see a vegetable for 2 months.

And let’s not forget the tiredness. 1^st trimester exhaustion is no joke. I stopped working out and would fall asleep around 7/8pm every night. Weekends I definitely napped midday, which is out of the ordinary for me. Take all of the above and add in trying to unpack a house with 2 toddlers and let’s just say it was a rough 6-ish weeks. And as much as I’d like to say that when I hit 14 weeks it magically got better….it didn’t. Stay tuned J