The First Trimester

On March 4 we officially graduated from the Fertility Clinic. March 6 was our 8 week mark, and by then I was so ready to tell. Of course the day we found out we told our parents and our siblings. They knew of the tough time we had getting to that point, so there was no point holding back that we were pregnant. What was fun was holding to ourselves that we were having twins (we figured it would be a good birthday surprise for my mom, so we waited a whole 4 days to let that news out!) By week 9 our dearest friends knew...and at week 12 we let the world know. At week 17, if you don't know I'm pregnant, you are living under a rock (or I dislike you enough to not have told you!)

My first 3 months weren't all that bad. So remember your first trimester starts the first day of your last monthly visitor...so the first 4 weeks you usually don't even know you are pregnant. With IVF, you get the benefit of "suspecting" it earlier (although that may not be a benefit), and you get your blood results sooner than most women suspect they might have missed their monthly visitor. So if you don't know you are pregnant until like 6 weeks, you probably don't even realize the symptoms you are experiencing are pregnancy related.

The symptoms I enjoyed were Fatigue and Queasiness. I would get home after working 8 hours, and zonk out. I would wake up, pretend to eat something, go back down to the couch and fall back asleep again. At this point, nothing appealed to me. Milk was the worst, yet as a pregnant woman, I needed the milk. I turned to an old friend...chocolate milk. Most days I just felt so yucky I just wasn't in the mood to eat, and please, if you even said chicken around me, I could have thrown up. Chicken seems to be a very common food aversion for us pregnant type. I've slowly been able to eat some here and there...but I'm not about to order it as a first choice! I was lucky to eat some corn for dinner! And the good news, in the first trimester the doctors don't really seem to mind!

My only trip to the bathroom came after a weekend road trip to my cousin's baby shower in Norfolk. I wouldn't change going for the world...maybe I wouldn't have gone by car though. I got extreme motion sickness, and was being nice to my other cousin who was driving by not demanding any stops along the way! I should have, but I didn't want to slow us down, or distrub her baby too much with constant stops! When I finally got my feet back on the ground that Monday, I got sick...and Dakota took advantage of me by diving into the meat I had bought for dinner that night (silly puppy!) But that was it...and to top thinkgs off, I was finally getting back into the mood to actually cook.

We also opted to do the first trimester screening. At my age, the risk of Downs Syndrome is 1 in 400. Of course it wasn't like we were going to terminate the pregnancy if they found anything, but it gave us a chance to see the babies on ultrasound, so there was no reason not to do it! It's an ultrasound and blood prick, so there is no risk to the babies. We have turned down all other genetic screening tests. At this point, we are blessed with our two babies, and nothing will change that for us. Our results came back and our odds improved dramatically. The other thing is, we get monthly ultrasounds, so the doctors will constantly see how they are developing, and will know if anything is wrong.

Oh the joys of pregnancy...next up, 2nd trimester. Since I'm currently in my second trimester, I will do my best to update at least weekly. I'm almost 17 weeks, so I'll spare trying to catch up on the earlier weeks...we'll jump straight to the now (nothing exciting really happened in week 15 to now anyway!)