First Trimester

Posted by Jane Highley on February 4, 2012

Prenatal Fitness: Not An Oxymoron

There are new comforts and luxuries that I discover when I am pregnant, and they only seem to satisfy when I am with child.  Simple things like herbal teas and sleep-inducing bubble baths may be part of your regular end-of-the-day ritual, but when I am not growing a baby-belly, I usually drink coffee as my preferred hot beverage and consider baths a waste of time (and water).  Constant changes to my body, both physiologically and anatomically, demand different solutions every few weeks.  However, one solution to most of my pregnancy woes has remained constant in all of my pregnancies, especially this one.  That solution is working out.  Whether on the trail for an easy-paced 5-mile run or working up a mean sweat in my living room with a DVD, I have discovered that maintaining my physical fitness through my pregnancy is critical.  If I am more fit, I am less uncomfortable in the third trimester, I rebound sooner and with no complications after the delivery, and most importantly, I feel good inside and out. (more…)

Posted by Jane Highley on January 3, 2012

Maternity Wear: What Works for Me

Whenever I see an article, either in print or on a blog, about “maternity fashion,” I laugh and wonder if the editors took the day off on the day of final review because the phrase seems like such an obvious oxymoron.  Women who live from one red-carpet moment to the next look stunning with or without a bump, but they have an entourage of designers, stylists, make-up artists, and personal assistants who practically throw themselves upon these celebrities to make them look like a goddess.  And when illustrious goddesses like Beyonce or Natalie Portman show off their growing bellies, they seem to glide across the floor in their dangerously high heels with perfect lady-like poise.

That’s not me.  At 17 weeks, I’m already showing a small belly, but it feels more like the result of too many holiday treats in one day and not enough Turkey Trot 5-Ks.  I don’t have a team of stylists fluttering about me, pulling outfits together for a play date or for a trip to Trader Joe’s.  That would be nice, I guess.  But with two little girls (ages 3 and 21 months) bouncing around me all day, I hardly have time to eat breakfast in one sitting, let alone stop to think about fashion.  And maternity fashion?  Forget it!  It can’t be done in my everyday (mis)adventures as a full-time mommy. (more…)

Posted by Meagan Church on July 27, 2011

Baby’s Heartbeat… Hearing That Whoosh, Whoosh Once Again

My stomach has given up. When I was pregnant with my first two and nursing them for their first years, I remember saying, “I can’t wait to have my body back.” It took some time (and patience on my part), but finally I was getting back to where it was beginning to feel like mine. It wasn’t looking the exact same, but I had gotten onto a decent workout track and I was starting to feel better about my body again. And then we decided to have another baby.

I swear the moment I became pregnant, my belly just gave up and popped out. With my first, I began showing somewhere in the fourth month. It happened a bit earlier with number two. But number three has made it difficult for us to keep our pregnancy a secret through the first trimester. (more…)

Posted by Elizabeth Masturzo-Baldeon on March 27, 2011

My Pregnancy Buddy

My best friend and I met on the first day of college and lived with each other for four consecutive years after that day. We are both the same age and both hold the same career. It is unfortunate that now we don’t live in the same state, but life does lead people to different places sometimes.

For different reasons, we both decided to have children at the same time. So not only do I have a best friend, I have a “pregnancy buddy”. And let me tell you, although I don’t feel it at all, I’m no spring chick anymore, and it is somewhat uncommon to find women my age who are pregnant.  Thank God for my Pregnancy Buddy. It is like having the PregTASTIC panel of pregnant women on speed dial. One of the 98,437,543,857 benefits of my pregnancy buddy best friend is that her not-so-pleasant birth experience helped me make mine a better one. (more…)

Posted by Mary Hurst on August 28, 2010

First Trimester: Singleton vs. Twin

While pregnant the first time a little over two years ago, I became hooked on PregTASTIC podcasts.  It was a lovely pregnancy with a delivery exactly as I’d hoped. My daughter, Maya, is just about 19 months old now.  I know we both benefited from the information and stories shared on PregTASTIC.

Fast forward and I’m pregnant again.  After one run at the mommy game, I figured I was an expert.  But that didn’t last long as I learned I’m expecting twins!  PregTASTIC hasn’t had much info on multiple pregnancies before, so I decided to stop being a casual listener and share my experience.

Here’s a run-down of the first trimester in both pregnancies.

Basics

Then: 31, married 3 yrs, living in Japan, part-time Fitness Instructor and English Tutor

Now: 33, married 5 yrs, living in Rhode Island, stay-at-home mother of 1 daughter.  If I make it to the full 40-week due date, my twins will be born the day before my daughter’s second birthday.

Conception

My husband is active duty Navy and deploys regularly.  Because we’d like him to be present for the birth of our children, we’ve had to plan when to try to conceive very carefully. Luckily I’m crazy fertile and our planning has been spot-on. 

Then: I was off the pill exactly one cycle. My husband had been at sea for a few months and happened to come home a couple days early, catching me in a good ovulation zone.

Now: I was off birth control exactly one cycle.  We had discussed trying for a boy this time and I did some research into what that could possibly entail. One of the suggestions was to maximize sex timing for ovulation, so I was using Ovulation Predictor Kits.  I found the day I was ovulating (or would be within 24 hrs) and the rest is history.

Getting Positive Result

Then: I took a pregnancy test and it was negative.  I left it in the bathroom and forgot about it.  When I came back a few hours later, there were two lines.  So, I took another test the following morning and had a positive within the appropriate results timeframe.  My husband and I were together for that test and were both excited about the results.  He left for the next 6 months that afternoon!

Now: I had been taking tests for about a week before I got the positive this time.  My husband and  were together for this one as well.

Symptoms

Then: Almost immediately, my breasts were huge!   I felt like I had jet lag and would collapse in the afternoon for a nice long nap. Some minor bleeding at about 6 weeks, but just brown blood which was determined to be no big deal, probably just implantation bleeding.

Now: No major breast size increase.  I was nauseous all day long, vomiting sporadically and highly sensitive to smell.  Almost everything made me gag.  I’ve never been so exhausted in my life, even in the first sleepless weeks of motherhood.  I’m not sure if it’s because I have to keep up with my toddler or just the double whammy of twins, but this time around I’m practically comatose.  Acne, vaginal discharge, body odor, gas, crabby attitude, headaches, absentmindedness, lightheadedness are all some of the lovely symptoms this time around!

First doctor’s appointments

Then: In Japan, there was only one OB to serve a very large population.  I didn’t meet her until she delivered my daughter!  So, I had my pregnancy followed by a number of different GPs in a very small clinic on base.  I was told to wait until 8 weeks along before coming in for the blood test and then my first ultrasound was at 10 weeks.

Now: There are no military OBs in my town, so I’m referred out to a local civilian OB practice.  My choice of provider is a Certified Nurse Midwife, whose practice also includes an OB.  I saw her when I was 7.5 weeks along, just after my positive blood test.  She has an ultrasound machine in the exam room and I’m thrilled to have a peek inside my uterus every visit!

OMG, I’m having WHAT??? My midwife spent a long time interviewing me about my first pregnancy and my medical history before we got to the ultrasound.  I told her how awful I’d been feeling and that I was just overwhelmed.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much she could do to reassure me since some women deal with much worse and each pregnancy is different.  When I was having my ultrasound, she poked around for a while and found a baby.  I said, “Just one”?  She asked about my family history and I told her that there were twins on my mother’s side.  She said, “Well, there is another egg sac here, but that doesn’t automatically mean twins.”  Of course she found the other baby!  Both had healthy heartbeats and separate sacs, separate placentas, which is great for twins and likely means they are fraternal.

Breaking the twins news

My husband – like many men, kids and women who haven’t had children – had always thought twins would be super and openly wished that we’d have twins.  I thought one at a time would be just fine!  Clearly he got his way.  I was in shock, but also excited.  I knew he’d be thrilled and our families would be ecstatic.  So, I hurried home to tell him, armed with 3 ultrasound photos.  He met me in the house and we chatted about my appointment.  I showed him picture # 1 and said, “This is a picture of a baby” and did the same with picture #2.   And then I handed him the last shot of them both and said, “This is a picture of the two of them together!”  It had a fairly dramatic effect and we just kind of stared at each other laughing before we collapsed on our couch to contemplate the rest of our lives.  Oy, heady stuff!

Since I was already 7 weeks along and had seen the babies and their heartbeats, we decided to tell our families right away.  We had kept the pregnancy news from them, so this was a pretty big scoop.  We Skyped with our parents and called or emailed with the rest of our families.  Our local friends already knew I was pregnant — I like my wine, so when I stopped drinking it was fairly obvious — but we waited a few more weeks to tell other friends.

Weight gain, exercise

Then: I gained 2 lbs the first trimester and was able to keep teaching fitness classes without dropping my workload.

Now: I gained 8 lbs in the first 12 weeks and was discouraged from exercise other than walking.

Twinsights

This pregnancy has been much harder on me overall than the first.  There are times when I think our timing was a little too rushed and that it would have been nice to have a summer together and enjoy just being a 3-person family for a while.  Our lifestyle doesn’t allow for much rose-smelling, so to speak, and we are forced to plan things far in advance.  We’ll be a party of 5 before we know it and life will continue to present new challenges!

Initially I thought my second pregnancy would be sort of ho-hum and boring since I’d been through it and knew what to expect.  Ha!  No way is this ho-hum!  It’s nice to have something altogether different to learn about and research.  I have a totally different library this time and have soaked up as much “twinfo” as possible.  My care is vastly different as I’ll be followed by a team of OB professionals and have more frequent and intense monitoring.  It’s exciting to share the news – people are awed by twins and I’ve had so many pleasant reactions that I can’t help but feel better about the minor irritations of pregnancy.