We're Having a Baby! First Trimester Recap

Yep! We’re having a baby!

I want to recap how my first trimester went and to speak honestly on a few topics when it comes to conception and pregnancy because there are so many things that I struggled with leading up to getting pregnant. I felt completely alone in my fears so I’m hoping that sharing them will make some of you feel less alone.

This is going to be a long post and I will probably break it into several parts, so thanks in advance for being here with me on this journey! I know reading about other women’s experiences has helped me tremendously so hopefully I will add to that spirit of sharing and helping others.

*And I want to preface this first. When I say “struggle” I realize it pales in comparison to some things couples go through when trying to conceive, and my heart goes out to anyone right now reading this who is struggling or has struggled to conceive. We didn’t struggle to conceive but I struggled mentally with being ready for a very long time. Everyone’s struggles are different and they are all valid.*

My mental struggles with becoming pregnant

For a long time I was a little resistant to the idea of pregnancy or parenthood in general. My whole life I knew I wanted to have a family, that was never in question, but it always seemed far down the road. That was something for “Future Me” to deal with. I know this isn’t a real problem, but if I had seen or heard other people talking about this then I might not have felt so alone and ashamed of my resistance.

I’ve been happy to focus on growing my blog and web design business, traveling with my husband, and settling into our new home in Charlottesville. I liked my life exactly as it was and didn’t like the idea of everything changing. Every time someone would say “having kids changes EVERYTHING” I would shudder and think “well that sounds terrible, I rather like my life thankyouverymuch!”

In reality I was petrified of losing myself. My identity. My drive for growing my business. My hobbies and interests. My ability to travel and feel freedom. I had to do some mindset shifting when it came to my assumptions that my life would be over when I had children. This is where it’s helpful to find a good therapist, but also look to women who are raising a family and perusing their passions. It can be done!

So I tried opening my mind to the fact that I can still be me and be a mom. I can still have passion for my business and be there for my children. I can have conversations about things other than baby topics. I can travel (albeit with a few modifications) around the world. I can handle the difficult parts of being a parent and enjoy all the wonderful parts too.

There’s also the decades of programming that tells us to not get pregnant at all costs while we are teenagers and young women. I spent 10 years on birth control, and did literally everything in my power to not get pregnant before I was ready, which is obviously the responsible thing to do. However, that concept seeps into one’s subconscious and creates a little belief that says “if you get pregnant you’ll ruin everything, your life will be over.” This is sound advice at 16 years old, and maybe even 21 years old, but at 33 and still feeling like I would be so screwed if I became pregnant, I knew there was some deprogramming work I needed to do. I don’t know how we are all expected to shift so quickly from “you shouldn’t get pregnant” to “ok now you are expected to get pregnant.” But that’s the black and white nature of our society for you, lacking any context or nuance.

In addition to the massive shift in my identity that I was resisting, there was something else… Since I was a kid I’ve had emetophobia. Emetophobia is a phobia of vomiting or the idea of vomit in general. Nobody enjoys vomiting, but emetophobia takes it to an unhealthy and irrational level. I’ve been to numerous therapists over the years, tried different therapies, developed coping strategies and experienced its affect on many aspects of my work and social life. You see, I was afraid of being pregnant in part because I had been terrified of having morning sickness, and I was afraid of being a mom because having kids means dealing with vomit from time to time. I know, it seems irrational, but that’s why it’s a phobia.

How did I overcome this? Haha, I didn’t. I just decided becoming a mom was more important than my fear. I was scared but I did it anyway. I’ve been very lucky in this pregnancy that I didn’t experience any vomiting, but there was no way for me to know that beforehand. Oh, and all that therapy I mentioned helped too!

So how does someone who is terrified of being pregnant, and scared of losing her identity and freedom decide it’s the right time to have a baby?

I used to believe every woman had a moment where she would wake up one day and feel this magical feeling that would say “you’re ready to be a mama.” I thought I would have a strong desire from deep in my soul and I would look forward to seeing that positive pregnancy test, and I would fall into my husband’s arms crying tears of joy and we would live happily ever after.

FALSE, false, false. I mean maybe it’s true for some people; just not for me, and that’s ok. This was a deliberate decision we made based on logistics and timing. I was somewhat disappointed because it wasn’t how I imagined it would play out. But that was just the beginning of understanding that nothing really plays out how you envision it when it comes to these things.

Here were the biggest factors that influenced our decision to have a baby now:

Age: I will be 34 this year and if I want two or three kids (spaced out by a couple of years) I didn’t want to be pushing 40 when I had my last because of the increased risks for complications. And my husband didn’t want to be an “old dad” …his words not mine.

The possibility of infertility: I didn’t know if I would run into fertility issues. Nobody really does. What if I had waited until I was 37 to start trying only to find out that it might take me years to get pregnant? I have several friends who have struggled to become pregnant, and some who are still desperately trying. Luckily this was not a problem for me but when you are trying to conceive you don’t know how long of a road it’s going to be and I didn’t want to have too late of a start if I could help it.

Life Timing: This one is a little silly, but I have three very important people in my life getting married within the next 12 months (my brother and 2 cousins who I am very close with) which all require travel and I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t miss any of their weddings. We had planned on starting to try to conceive so the timing of the birth would not interfere with the weddings. I feel a little shame about this one because you really can’t always time these things. But to whatever extent I had some control I wanted to have a solid plan.

But you know what they say. We plan and God laughs.

Even good news is big news.

I want you to know that even when you have good news like this, it’s still big news. Big news can come with mixed feelings and takes a lot of time to process. I was experiencing so much shame for not feeling pure joy and excitement like I thought I should. I’d wonder, does this make me a bad person? The more I talked to other women and looked at blogs like this, the more I realized that it’s not always the fairytale that movies make it out to be. Not all women float around on a cloud of bliss when they find out they are expecting, even if it is what they wanted. If you have yet to experience this for yourself I want you to know that you can have a wide variety of emotions in this scenario, and not all of those emotions have to be happy ones. It doesn’t mean you are unhappy about it or will be an unloving mother at all.