Hello Friends!
I have been so eager to share this first trimester recap with you all! I'm going to be sharing my real and honest overview of my experience so far. I'll be talking symptoms, cravings, baby names, and how we plan to be minimalist with this third (and FINAL) baby!
Let me start off by saying, oh my gosh were having another baby!
Seriously?! I'm still in shock some days that we are actually having another baby.I'm currently 20 weeks pregnant as I write this and a lot of the times it still doesn't feel real until I see our sweet babe on the ultrasound. I have always dreamed about being a mom to three and this wasn't our plan to have three, but I'm so excited that I'm being blessed with that ability and miracle to have one more baby!
If you've been following me on Instagram in the last year, you will know that 2021 was absolutely c-r-a-z-y. We started out with an amazing beginning to our year and then it all went down hill fast. Life style changes, budgets, medical bills, new jobs, loss of jobs, and so much had happen that we felt lost at times. Honestly, we were at our best point as a family financially and then quickly started to wonder how we we're going to pay for groceries. That year wasn't all bad though. I gained a wonderful friend that year, it pushes me to find other employment options (that ultimately have been a saving grace and has put our family in a better financial situation than we've EVER been in), and we became pregnant with my dream child.
I found out I was pregnant on October, 13th 2021. I knew FOR SURE I was pregnant on October, 15th 2021. The day before my sister's baby shower. The first test I took was very faint. I had to consult my sister and my husband to find out if what I was looking at was a faint pink line or if I was envisioning something that wasn't there. A couple days later, I took another test and the very faint line became a much more visible faint pink line. Still hardly there, but enough to know that, yup you're probably pregnant. I had to keep such a huge secret from family the next day while we celebrated my sister's baby.
How I Felt:
The following week I started to feel very nauseous and get signs of pregnancy. Luckily for me, I was able to get an appt with my OBGYN just two weeks after testing. Which is kind of unheard of, usually they won't schedule your first appt until you are about 8-10 weeks along. I made it aware that it was important I see them sooner because I was also taking blood thinners prior to becoming pregnant. Blood thinners are used to help some women get pregnant, but blood thinners can also cause problems like a miscarriage. I needed to know asap that this baby was attaching and healthy.
In those first two weeks, I was nauseous, had low energy, breast soreness, bloating, and basically the majority of the signs of pregnancy. I was still able to exercise and made a point to exercise for at least 15 minutes (whatever I could handle due to low energy) a day. I was able to keep up with that for a few weeks. Then round ligament pain didn't help me out. Everyday I felt like I was going to puke, but never did. I've had vomiting with my other two pregnancies and honestly, never really dealt with nausea in the way I did with this third pregnancy. Out of all my pregnancy symptoms, the nausea was the worst and one I couldn't figure out how to manage. I tried ginger and it made it worse. I made sure I ate well in the mornings. I increased my water intake. I tried a few things, but ultimately I just had to wait it out. It wasn't till about 16 weeks it finally went away all together. Thank God!
At my first appt, I discovered I was only 4 weeks pregnant! I thought I would have been 5 weeks going on 6. The baby was nothing more than a bubble. I was still early on in the pregnancy, but they could tell the baby was growing and healthy. There was no heart beat at this time. The next month felt like the longest month of my life! I couldn't wait for that 8 week appt to know if there was going to be a heart beat or not. Thankfully, when the appt did come around, the baby did indeed have a heart beat! It was also so strange to of seen your baby as a bubble and in just 4 weeks turn into something that truly resembled a human child! Mind blowing! This was it. We have a healthy baby and it's growing! I could not be more excited. Even though our excitement came with fear when we found out at the first baby appt that I would have to continue my blood thinning medicine in the form of injections. This was not easy for any of us to process, the fear of injecting myself, the concern of cost, and the concern of what effects it would have on baby or myself.
Eventually all things work out. The cost is manageable. The fear of injecting myself is still there some days and others it's easy peasy. There are no effects to the baby and for myself, I only have to fear minor things. I will have to make some adjustments closer to delivery to prevent certain risks, like bleeding, but overall I should do just fine and will be in good hands. I am confident that I'll be okay and heal just fine.
How Did Our Kids React?
When we told our kids, it was the same day as telling our parents. Everyone was excited, my son was excited for baby and that whole experience he probably never would of gotten, and as for my daughter she was not. Yes, my daughter is my oldest and was four when we had her brother. She was excited for him and loved having a baby around. Until the baby got older, annoying, and not fun. She loves her brother and they play well together. Unfortunately, she fears we won't have time for her or that we'll love her less. We've had conversations and helped her to understand not much would change. She would still be our priority and have time for her and her needs. Sometimes, kids just need to adjust on their own time. I am trying to give her ALL the time she needs. There's some days she says some pretty hurtful things about the baby, the fact I'm having a baby, and still does not except the baby as part of our future family. I explain to her that it upsets me when she feels negative towards the new baby. Hopefully in time or when the baby is here, she sees this could be a positive thing in life.
Our Birth Plan:
This pregnancy has been special in many ways. "Special" as in challenging. This has literally been my hardest pregnancy, more on that to come in my second trimester recap. Although, having a "special" pregnancy isn't all bad when you know exactly how this birth is going to go as soon as you find out.
My past pregnancies were both C-sections because I cannot have natural birth. My uterus is the wrong shape, therefore my babies would suffocate if I tried. I had successful c-sections in the past with great recovery. I was advised before even considering this pregnancy, that a third would have to be my last. The body just would not be able to handle multiple c-sections past three. Which made me want a third baby even more. Have a third and be done. Tubes tide and all! That's our plan too. We will be delivering by c-section and then I'll be having my tubes tide. We also get the special pleasure of being on blood thinners and having to be cautious and time surgery based off my last blood thinner injection. When we get closer to my due date, the doctors will switch me from Lovenox (last 12 hrs in body) to Heprin (which I believe last 6 hours in the body). Currently, I take 1 dose of Lovenox a day, but closer to delivery I'll be doing two shots of heparin a day. This just makes it a lot safer fo c-section delivery and post recovery.
Food Aversions & Cravings:
Thankfully, my food aversions have been mild compared to my second pregnancy. The second pregnancy was awful with food aversions. Being hungry, but also nothing looked good enough to eat unless it was red meat! So far I have only had to sadly say goodbye to COFFEE! Yes, this baby does not like hot coffee. Iced coffee? We can drink iced coffee all day! I like starting my day with a cup of hot coffee, so this was challenging when I relied on that comforting boost of energy. I did discover this baby will tolerate hot tea though. I guess I'm a hot tea drinker now and my go to is Vanilla Chai! mmmm! Other than coffee, I haven't discovered anything else that turns my stomach.
As for cravings, give me all the extremely ice cold drinks like slushees, iced coffee, iced water, ice cold smoothies, and all the things fruity like sherbet! If it's cold, icy, and fruity I want it!!! My favorite things currently are Taco Bells Freezes, sherbet, and a medium iced coffee from Dunkin!
Baby Names:
This is a fun topic! We can never agree on baby names. When I was pregnant the first time, we knew exactly what names we wanted. Second time around, we could only agree on a boys name and our girls name was probably not one I would have kept. This third pregnancy, I already had a boys name I knew I wanted and I didn't really like any other names. I should also mention that after we named our daughter; Aerianna; we kind of decided to stick to a theme. haha.
Girls names are A's. Boy names are J's. I don't know what made us do this, but we really liked the name Jaxon for a boy in our second pregnancy and we ended up having a boy. This time we decided to just stick to our little theme we have going and a boy name would be a J and a girl name would be a A.
Picking a boy name was easy for us since I don't really like too many other J names for boys. We even considering using an A name for a boy and that was a fail too. I loved the name Jeremy after we had Jaxon. I figured if we ever had another kid and it was a boy, we would name him that. The middle name will be inspired by my husbands grandfather. He was very close to him. I wish I could of met him, but he seemed to be a very fun loving person. A grandpa that would of absolutely adored all his great grandchildren. Sadly, he passed away long before I met my husband. His name was Burton. Our son's name would be Jeremy Burton.
As for picking a girls name, good grief, I never thought we would agree. I was honestly getting pretty frustrated with Aaron, because he would not agree to anything I liked. I had names like Adelaide, Allison, and Addison picked out. I like the nick name Ally or Addy if we have another girl. He absolutely hated them. I was so mad. Until one night laying in bed, we kept bouncing the name Allison again. It's actually my dad's middle name and he hates his middle name. Sorry Dad. I think it would be a cute name for a girl, but Aaron still didn't like it much. He then asked if we could name her Alice. He thought Alice was close enough to Allison that maybe I would agree. Alice.. all I think of is Alice in Wonderland when I see the name Alice. But, I could still use the nickname Ally if her name is Alice. My husband liked the idea of Alice and nickname Ally, but he didn't like Alice looking like "A- Lice". He could only think of kids in school making fun of her and calling her a lice. We would looked up multiple ways of spelling Alice and decided we really loved it spelled as Alyce. Alice but with a y instead of an i. Her middle name we decided to honor to choose a grandmother's name to honor like we did with the boys middle name. Eventually we loved the idea and sound of pairing two of our grandmothers names together. My grandma's and his grandma's middle names. Our daughter's name would be Alyce Irma-Jean. I cannot tell you how much I love this name and how much it makes me hope this baby is a girl, because I could not love a name even more than this.
Side note: all our children's middle names were inspired by grandparents. If you're ever stuck on picking out a name or middle name, ask your parents and grandparents what their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents names and middle names are. I bet you'll find one you like.
We do want to know the gender of this baby. Unfortunately, my insurance won't pay for the genetic testing this time around so we couldn't find out until our 20 weeks appt. I will update you all on what the gender is when I write my second trimester recap!
Minimalist Baby:
I plan to go into much more detail on this in another blog post, including a list of my favorite minimalist baby items, baby essentials, baby clothes, baby toys, etc. Minimalist is a well known word and idea in our time right now and it's also trendy. I don't want to do it because it's trendy. I more so want to be minimalist about this baby because we are having a third baby, our last baby, on a budget, in a house that is only 3 bedrooms, in a house that is only just a tiny bit bigger than a 1,000 sq foot, and we really do not need half the things we had for our last babies for this baby.
I just want to be practical. Honestly, my husband is in a panic about "all the things we need to buy", while I'm just chill and laid back. We only need A, B, and C really. We don't need X, y, and Z. I think being more minimalist with this baby will be a great idea for this baby. Again, I will go into more detail on this in another blog post soon.
Due Date:
We our due with baby in June 2022!
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