Baby #3: First Trimester

Boom. Just like that, I’m halfway through this pregnancy already. And I’ve barely written a thing about it so far.

It’s strange, because I definitely think about being pregnant on a daily basis—it’s always there, but it’s like it’s just part of life at the moment. Part of my body, just something that is constantly there, but sort of in the background while we deal with the hustle and bustle of kids (the ones on the outside), work, home, getting everyone where they need to be and when they need to be there.

So, my apologies go out to B3 (baby #3, get it? a little nickname!) in the future, that I haven’t focused as much on documenting his/her pregnancy as I did for the older sisters. With Nora, I diligently wrote every week from 16-39 weeks. With Vivienne, I skipped a few weeks here and there, but still managed to do a decent job, again from 16-39 weeks. Given that we’re now at 20 weeks and this is my first real pregnancy post for B3, I’m thinking my record will not be that stellar. I think it’s more a reflection of my general blogging habits now, though—I don’t often make the time to write about ANYTHING anymore. So, B3—don’t take it personally. :)

Before I try to get all on track by posting about my pregnancy right now, let’s back up a bit and talk about first trimester.

THE PHYSICAL

First trimester sucked. A general feeling of awfulness settled in around 5-6 weeks and stuck around until around 12 weeks, when I started to feel it lifting away. I think I was more nauseous this pregnancy than either of my others, though I remember Vivienne’s being pretty bad, too. But there was a lot of dry heaving going on this time. Never actually threw up, which has consistently been the case with all three pregnancies, but the gagging was fierce. My gag reflex is STILL a little oversensitive at times.

I remember one morning, right around 6 weeks, I was getting ready to head out for an early meeting with a client. I hadn’t eaten anything yet (big mistake) because breakfast was being served at the meeting. As I squatted down to hug Nora goodbye, I suddenly started gagging repeatedly over her shoulder. Actually had to run to the toilet for that one! Thankfully, my stomach was empty—which was causing the problem in the first place—so there was nothing to throw up. I inhaled a few pretzels and was able to go on with my day as usual. So weird.

Another source of nausea was strong smells in the morning. This is still an issue for me now, actually, but it seems to have at least improved. For instance, Nora will bring cheese, pepperoni, and crackers as part of her lunch sometimes. At some point, I found I could no longer stomach the smell of pepperoni when packing her lunch in the mornings. As soon as the bag was opened, one whiff and I was gagging uncontrollably. Same deal with putting dinners into the crockpot in the mornings—black beans, salsa, etc.—I just could not take it.

And to this day, I STILL gag most times when flossing my back teeth. Ugh. So yeah, all of that was not/has not been fun.

Other than that, there was fatigue. That’s still hanging around, actually, but has eased up substantially.

THE ULTRASOUNDS

I had two ultrasounds in the first trimester. One was done right around 6 weeks for dating and to check on a little bit of spotting. My cycles were a bit longer than “normal” when I got pregnant so it was good to have that early ultrasound—it moved my doctor-calculated due date (which they originally based on LMP) back by over a week. If we’re being precise, I actually think they moved it back a few days too far, but WHATEVER. It’s all just an estimate anyway, and I’d rather have it be a few days later than it’s “supposed” to be so no one is trying to induce me earlier than necessary,  if it comes to that. WHICH HOPEFULLY IT WON’T.

I will say, however, that the first ultrasound actually freaked me out more than it helped my mindset at that point because the baby was still basically unrecognizable to me as even a “bean” of an embryo, and although we were able to locate a heartbeat visually, it was too small/weak to get a reading on it. When I had early ultrasounds with the girls, both were done at 7 weeks and it is AMAZING how much those few days can make a difference. When I left the first ultrasound with B3, I was kicking myself for not insisting on waiting a few extra days so that it was all just a little more reassuring.

Alas, I managed to survive the anxiety of the first trimester and it was a huge relief to see B3 again at 12 weeks, for our NT scan ultrasound. Arms and legs and brain and beating heart. And measuring like a week ahead, by the way. Sweet, sweet relief.

KEEPING A SECRET

One thing we did entirely different this pregnancy was to keep it a secret from pretty much everyone until the second trimester. With Nora, the timing worked out (as far as seeing everyone in person) that we told our immediate families at 5 weeks, so really just a few days after getting a positive test. With Vivienne, I was coming off of an early miscarriage so I was a little more gun shy. Plus, we found out right after Thanksgiving, which meant we had just seen both sides of the family and wouldn’t again until Christmas. Naturally, Christmas seemed like a good time to tell everyone, so we held off for that. I was 8 weeks.

This time around, it felt so much more complicated. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to tell anyone—I really, REALLY did—but we had to take Nora into consideration. When I was pregnant with Vivienne, Nora was 2 and fairly oblivious to what was going on so it didn’t matter. This time, she’s 5 and we knew she would understand. And, fearing miscarriage, I did not want to have to try to explain a loss if that were to happen. It felt strange to think about telling our families on the D.L. and trying to keep it from Nora—we wanted her to be a part of it.

So, after some debate, we decided to wait. UNTIL THANKSGIVING. Again, we wanted to do it in person and we wanted to tell both sides of the family within a few days of each other, so Thanksgiving was going to be the first time that would be possible. I was actually already 14 weeks! And, if you have any experience with third pregnancies, you know that they are hard.to.hide. I was constantly wearing looser fitting shirts to hide the growing bump. It was torture not to even be able to tell my own mother! The plan was to tell Michael’s family on Saturday, November 21 (weekend before Thanksgiving), since that was when we were celebrating with them. Then we’d tell my family on the actual holiday.

We saw various members of our family and friends before Thanksgiving, though, so as it turned out, I had to do a lot of fake drinking. If I wasn’t “enjoying” a beer here and there, we knew it would raise questions right away. Our method was for me to take a beer and carry it around, pretending to sip. Michael would drink down half his own beer and then we’d inconspicuously switch bottles. Then we’d eventually switch again when his (well, mine) was empty. We were really clunky at it at first (and I had a hard time controlling my laughter during our switches!) but we got pretty darn good at it by the end. No one blew us in, and no one confessed afterward that they had noticed anything awry. *high five*

Nora seemed to pick up on the fact that something was going on, though. Michael and I were pretty careful about not talking about it around her, but there were a few times when she straight-up said something about a baby being in my belly. It was freaky. One time in particular stopped me in my tracks and nearly rendered me speechless.

One night after dinner, when I was around 12 weeks pregnant, Nora wanted to give me a bear hug in the kitchen. We were both standing, so she was basically hugging my waist and I was hunched over, hugging her from above. After we pulled away, she smiled at me and goes:

N: “Mommy, I just saw into your tummy. There’s a baby in there.”
I started uncontrollably laughing because I was so shocked. “You’re crazy,” I told her. I wasn’t going to lie to her and say no, but also did not want to deviate from the plan and confirm at that point (especially since Michael wasn’t even home). I was just trying to brush it off for now and make it into a silly thing.
N: (giggles a little, but insistent) “No really, I saw a baby in there.”

I started playing along a little and asking questions since she was starting to freak me out.

Me: “When? When did you see a baby in there?”
N: “It’s in there right now.”
Me: “How can you see inside my belly?”
N: (immediately) “Because I have super powers.”

You know that emoji with the big, wide eyes? Yeah. That was me. Kids’ intuition is scary, you guys. After that, I was so convinced that she *knew* somehow that I wondered if she would even be surprised when we did the big reveal.

FINALLY, THE REVEAL

Once we had the second ultrasound, I was bursting at the seams to tell everyone. Especially Nora and Vivienne. We had originally planned to wait until the day before we told Michael’s family, but I cracked the weekend before that. On that Sunday morning, November 15, we were sitting there in the living room and Michael and I managed to have a quick conversation about it even though the girls were right there. He was fine with telling them so we quickly got them set up with snacks (only way to get Vivienne to sit still in front of a camera, don’t you know), and got the camera set up on the tripod to film their reactions.

(If you can’t see the embedded video, click here)

Nora’s reaction was fairly predictable (still adorable), but oh man, Vivienne was hilarious. Obviously she still doesn’t really know what the heck any of this means but the fact that she managed to use the word “cool”—especially considering she’s speech delayed—AND use it appropriately/in context/at just the right timing was awesome. Priceless. I’m so glad we have it on video.

We weren’t quite sure how we were going to tell our families until the last minute. In the week after we told the girls, Nora took to drawing several family pictures of us that included a little stick-figure baby in Mommy’s tummy. I started to think about how that could be fun—have her draw the picture and then present it to the family to see who noticed the little addition. We went out to dinner the night before our Thanksgiving with Michael’s family, so while we waited for our food, we had her draw the picture.

Love it! And it turned out to be a fun, different way to tell the families, too. Michael’s family was surprised but not floored, and happy. My family was not at all surprised. LOL. They’d been ragging on us about whether or not we were having a third for months, so it was a lot of “I KNEW IT!!” and “WE WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS!” and so on. We had called my dad and told him via FaceTime on Thanksgiving morning. I showed him the picture and it took him a minute but he got it. He actually got a little teary which I thought was really cute.

After all of the family members had been notified, we told friends by texting them this photo and/or posting it on social media:

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY. Fun day. It was sooo nice to finally have the cat out of the bag.

I think that wraps up a summary of the first trimester with Baby #3! Hopefully I can get a more current post up sooner rather than later. :)