A Pregnancy Update: My Own Insight at 18 Weeks

I’m pregnant! 18 weeks pregnant! Almost half-way there and my early-pregnancy nausea has finally started to subside. It's been a difficult 18 weeks and now that I am beginning to feel like myself again I thought I would hop on the ol' blog and share my experience, because the one thing that has helped me oh-so much during these difficult weeks has been reading about others’ pregnancies. Of course, everyone's pregnancy is different, but getting a sense of what other women have gone through has helped me better understand my own pregnancy and has given me the encouragement I deeply needed on those days I felt defeated. Reading and listening to various experiences has helped me prepare to be completely unprepared… because let’s face it, no matter what you expect, it’s going to be so much different.

Q: How to prepare for pregnancy?

I am in no way going into the nitty-gritty of everything (so much!!) you need to do to prepare for a pregnancy, but I will share one thing that surprised me. And this one may seem obvious, but in the moment it felt like a shock: pregnancy doesn’t work on your time frame. We tend to overthink and over-prepare and over-schedule everything in our lives. So when it was time to have kids, I subliminally expected—like I do with everything—that it would happen on my time. Now, of course I knew that’s not how it worked, but it still caught me off guard. With it came a lot of heart ache, but what I learned is that no matter how long it takes or for whatever reason, once you mentally decide you want to become a mother it’s hard not getting that wish granted right away. I feel for every woman out there, no matter their story, and what helped me during it all was knowing I was not alone in feeling that way.

Q: Did you have morning sickness?

Depends on what you consider morning sickness. I felt absolutely awful all the time and hated food, but I never threw up, which I was proud of! (Small victories… am I right?) I was, however, extremely nauseous and I constantly felt like I was going to throw up. I would spend a good amount of time next to a trash can telling myself to keep it in. I couldn’t even ride in an Uber it was so bad. I even fainted! At work. In the middle of the day. Before any of my colleagues knew I was even pregnant… it was scary. I also came very close to fainting a few other times . At church I would get very dizzy and clammy and start sweating and run out of the pew like a bride who suddenly got cold feet. Then there was the tiredness. So so so so tired, but honestly it never affected me too much because I made sleep my number one priority. When I felt tired, I slept. I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I often slept for 11 hours a night and my day consisted of getting up, going to work, dealing with the nausea, coming home, sleeping, repeat. But as long as I got the sleep I needed at night I didn’t feel too tired during the day, on most occasions.

Q: What was has been the biggest surprise?

Hands down how awful I felt. I always knew the first trimester would be tough, but I expected it to be difficult for different reasons. Weeks 6-16 were the worst. I knew about “morning sickness,” but I was not prepared for this:

1. Food aversions x 1 million. I did not want to eat a thing. I mean anything. It’s not that it would make me sick, it’s that I felt sick just thinking about food. Smoothies saved me and my husband made them for me every day. I didn’t love them, but I could eat them without gagging, which was more than I could say about anything else. Once I went into a grocery store and had to run out because I was so disgusted by all the food. Saltines were good too. Looking back now I don’t know how I made it through those weeks. I cried. I slept. I tried to drink my smoothies. The only thing that I LOVED during these 10 weeks was ice-cold bottled water. That’s all I wanted. And it tasted amazing. Everything else was disgusting. I even read the word “vegetable” in a book and started to gag (never finished the book). I am much better now and although I still don’t really like food, I can eat and I don’t get sick just thinking about it anymore (though vegetables still haven't made their way back into my all-carb diet).

2. An absolutely disgusting flavor in your mouth, constantly! Not every pregnant women experiences this phenomenon of always having a nasty flavor in your mouth, but I sure did. No matter what I tried, nothing could make it go away. Brushing my teeth, chewing gum, eating mints… they might mask it for a bit but it was always there and always so gross. It’s better now than it was in the beginning, but it’s still there.

Q: Do you have any cravings?

Besides cold bottled water weeks 6-16… no, not yet. There are days when I get excited because I think of something I can eat that doesn’t gross me out, but it’s not really a craving. Just excitement that I actually want to eat something.

Q: Are you drinking coffee?

Ha! This is a good one. I was disgusted by the thought of coffee up until week 12. I didn’t want it at all. I am most definitely drinking it now though! I don’t want it as much as I used to, but I do love that I can now capable of enjoying a cup again. As far as caffeine is concerned, it’s not a big issue for me because I never had that much caffeine in the first place. Pro tip: drink lattes instead of coffee. There is less caffeine in an espresso. If I order regular coffee I always get half decaf, just to be extra careful.

Q: What’s something you have learned? Go easy on yourself. Listen to your body. If you body wants chips for dinner, eat chips. If your body wants to watch TV instead of exercising, watch TV. I think because I felt so sick it kind of forced me to go easy on myself. You’ll read everywhere how important it is to eat the right foods but don't let yourself get hung-up on it. I remember reading that I should be eating 3 servings of fish a week… HA! As if I could possibly get myself to eat something as exotic as salmon… I’ll stick with my bland butter and pasta thanks. But for real, I actually struggled with this a lot. As a veggie-junkie and complete foodie, I felt guilty for not eating nutrient-rich foods. Could this be the start of mom guilt? I think so. I felt bad for myself and for the baby with regards to how I was eating, or not eating… my doctor calmed me down and assured me that everything would be just fine even if I ate donuts instead of kale (which I did).

You’ll also read everywhere that exercising is so important during pregnancy, but news flash: exercise is always important. This was sort of an “Aha!” moment for me, when I realized that all the advice given to pregnant women on how to be healthy is really the exact same advice given to non-pregnant women. Eat right and exercise often. I had been waiting for the moment when I would physically feel how important it was to exercise, but it never came. Maybe that’s because exercise has always been such a big part of my life so it wasn't something new I had to learn. So what I am getting at is don’t be so hard on yourself if you’re not exercising as much or eating as healthy as you used to. I tried to keep it up as best as I could simply because I like to exercise and I enjoy cooking healthy meals, but the key words here are “as much as I could.” It’s more important to listen to your body and to go easy on yourself.