The First Trimester

Recently I talked to a friend of mine, who just found out that she's few weeks pregnant. She knew that I had been going through a lot during my first trimester and apparently she experienced the same thing, so she seek me for advice. I still remembered how terrible the feeling of not knowing what happens in your body and how the body reactions are uncontrollable. There were also times I was so desperate of being sick all the time.

The most depressing thing is, I was so clueless about the pregnancy symptoms and I didn't even know whether they were normal or not. That is when this friend asked me about it, I realized that perhaps all new mother to be are as clueless as I was. Yes, we heard and saw on TV that when you are pregnant, possibly you'll experience nausea and morning sickness, but until we have one, we didn't know that the nausea is really that bad or apparently the morning sickness is not happen only in the morning but all day long. It got me thinking that I should write about the whole feelings and experiences that I had been through during my first trimester to provide insight for those who will have a baby soon or who might just found out that they are having a new life growing inside.

During your first trimester, most likely you would experience nausea which makes you lose your appetite, even though it is your favorite dish. The nausea could come at any time, especially when you smell something with strong, such as garlic, strong perfume and most often is the smell of spices when someone is cooking. During the first few weeks, I cannot even stand the smell of hot white rice. While the nausea caused by strong smell is last longer than just few weeks, I started to be able to smell garlic and cook after the first trimester is over. Oh and one funny thing is the nausea easily aroused when I was brushing my teeth. I was sometimes vomit after brushing my teeth. I've never heard that pregnant woman could easily get nausea while brushing teeth, but I had experience that, and apparently this friend of mine has the same issue over brushing teeth.

Since I couldn't eat certain kind of food or otherwise I would vomit after eating, I became pickier than ever in  choosing what I want to eat. Mostly I picked food which were either less tasty or had sour taste. For certain I'm avoiding food which use a lot of garlic. The best food to avoid nausea are fruits, especially fruits with sour flavor such as oranges. Eating noodles instead of rice also helped me to avoid nausea. As certain type of foods didn't cause nausea, you might start craving for unusual foods, perhaps that's why some people said that pregnant woman intend to have unique food craving. In my opinion, the food craving is only occurred since our body rejects certain types of foods.

At night, you would possibly having a hard time sleeping during the first trimester. You would find yourself awakened at night, feeling hungry and nausea sometimes. I noticed that there is a tendency that you would get nausea if you get up too fast from sleeping position, so the key is slowing down the process of getting up from bed when you're awake. What I did was stacking up some pillow first so the upper body would be higher than the lower body, stay in that position for some time while eating some biscuits or drink sweet tea. Make sure to put the sweet biscuits (for me sweet stuff helps in overcoming nausea) are within your reach when you're in bed so you don't have to get up to reach it. After a while, you could get up from bed with less nausea. That strategy worked best for me.

Having the nausea and losing my appetite caused my body to weaken. At noon, I found myself easily sleepy and tired. I couldn't even staring at computer or mobile phone more than half an hour without feeling dizzy and having nausea. Even when I need to go out from house, I would easily get nausea and sometimes vomited when I was in the car. That was the part that made me feel stressed because it means I couldn't do any thing during the days. It was as if my body is beyond my control. I wanted to feel healthy so badly, but couldn't do anything about it.

I was too late to realize that your mind controls your body and being stressed out over your body reaction just make it even worse. So for those of you who are currently experience the pregnancy symptoms and feel really bad about it, my suggestion is fill your mind with positive thoughts, accept that those symptoms are totally normal and keep telling yourself that you would get through this soon and you are healthy. Just follow your body reaction, if your body tells you that you're tired, try to get enough rest, or when you have the willing to eat certain kind of foods, just have the foods you want, perhaps your body needs the nutrition from the food. My point is do not push your body to react against what it wants and needs, listen to your body and you would feel so much better.

Most important thing of all, there's a new life growing inside of you, so you should feel blessed about it.

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady