[So, while I’m posting this in April, I started this vlog and Q&A in my first trimester which was September-November of 2019. I’ve gone back and forth between sharing the vlog with others, but ultimately, I like the idea of welcoming friends and family into this season with us. I’ve always planned on making and sharing this vlog with Baby Howard one day, but it was fun to also answer some questions about the first trimester that will be fun to look back on as well!]
|| FIRST TRIMESTER VLOG | September-November 2019 ||
|| FIRST TRIMESTER Q&A ||
I’ve done a pretty good job keeping track of important milestones and memories of this trimester in my pregnancy journal, but because I share a lot of my life on social media, I thought it’d also be fun to share some of my experiences here on my blog and answer a few of those FAQs I’ve gotten throughout this trimester. I share these things partly to be helpful to anyone in a similar season and partly because I know it will be fun to look back on this post in the future 🙂
Were you and Jay trying to conceive?
Yes, we were! We’ve been married since 2011 and have always wanted a family. One of the perks of getting married so young (I was 21 and Jay was 23) is that we’ve had so many years to build a solid marriage and have gotten to do so much just the two of us. With me turning 30 this year, we decided we wanted to start our family 🙂
How did you know you were ready to start a family?
Gosh, this is such a hard question and will probably differ from couple to couple. For us, we’ve always desired to feel as settled and rooted as possible before bringing babies into the equation. In particular, we wanted to have our own home and for Jay to feel stable in his career and future. Can you start your family before those things happen? Absolutely! And we would’ve been delighted to have a baby before those things happened for us, but we were also aiming for that rooted feeling of knowing where we’ll be living for the foreseeable future (keep in mind, we moved from Texas to OC and have rented a lot out here, so we’re very familiar with that “temporary” feeling), while also having Jay feel secure in his career as I enter full-time motherhood in one of the most expensive counties in the country! Again, it’s not all about owning a home and how much money is in the bank, but that stability and finally feeling settled into our lives really made us eager to start our family. My recommendation to anyone considering a family is to chat with your spouse to determine what you’d ideally want your life to look like as you welcome a baby into it. Are there certain goals you have? Do you not care and you’ll just roll with the punches? Everyone is different! And some people will say that you’re never truly ready to start a family, but for us, we’ve done our best to plan and prepare to the point where we’re really eager and excited for Baby Howard!
How did you find out, and how did you tell Jay?
Because we were trying, I was pretty diligent for 3 months leading up to us officially trying by tracking my cycle (I used the “Flo” app) and taking prenatal vitamins to prep my body. I had a feeling that mayyybe I was pregnant, so I went to Target and grabbed a pregnancy test. I actually waited to take it until a day when Jay and I had nothing planned for the evening because, if we were pregnant, I wanted to spend the evening together just being excited. I LOVE surprises and surprising Jay with things, so I’ve always known that I wanted to know before him and surprise him with the news. So I took the test after he left for work and found out that I was pregnant! Someone asked me if it was weird to find out alone, but it wasn’t because it was so important to me to surprise Jay later that day, and that excitement consumed my emotions!
I had been brainstorming a fun way to tell Jay, so once I saw the positive pregnancy test, I put the plan into motion. That month, Jay and I were taking turns planning fun, intentional date nights, so I told him that I was planning a fun date (key word “date”, not “date night”) and that I had hidden clues all around the house with a scavenger hunt. Each clue would lead him to a letter that he’d have to unscramble to reveal our “date”. So, in his mind, he was trying to unscramble the words “mini golf” or something haha, when really, he was unscrambling our due date of “May 10th”! I knew he wouldn’t be able to unscramble the due date, so I also picked up some infant-sized sneakers (Stan Smiths, which are Jay’s favorite sneakers) and put the pregnancy tests in the box with the sneakers. If you watched the vlog, I recorded his reaction opening the sneakers and then unscrambling the due date. So, so special!
When did we start telling people?
We found out we were pregnant at 5 weeks and had our first appointment (and even heard the heartbeat!) at 6 weeks. After that, we wanted to invite our closest friends into it with us, so we told our 4 best friend couples at week 7 so they could be praying for us and Baby Howard. Everyone will be different in when they start telling friends or family, but personally, we knew that first trimester might be a scary time of hoping and praying that Baby stayed healthy, so we wanted our friends praying alongside of us. It was important to us to tell our parents in person and we had a trip scheduled to Texas when I was at 10 weeks, so we waited to tell our families until then. After that, we told all of our other friends at my 30th birthday party (which was the last day of my first trimester), and then we announced the pregnancy to the world (meaning via social media haha) on the first day of my second trimester!
How are you feeling? Any pregnancy symptoms?
So far, pregnancy has treated me well! I’ve had morning sickness a total of 3 days, and they were the last three days of my first trimester. So I’m really hoping this isn’t my new norm (fingers crossed)! I’ve definitely felt extremely tired and have just given into the fatigue by taking naps and resting as much as possible. My tiredness is actually one of the reasons I thought I might be pregnant because I’m normally a big extrovert and having FOMO to the max, so I’ll never be the first to leave a party. However, around week 4 of being pregnant (before we knew), we had multiple events that week where I leaned over to Jay and asked if we could go home. He was like, “Sure! But what’s wrong with you?!” haha… Well, now we know!
Another symptom along with the fatigue has been a loss of appetite. I think this one also goes hand in hand with fatigue because, typically, I’m at the gym 4 days a week which makes me really hungry. But because I’ve been so tired, there have been weeks where I’ve only gone to the gym once or not at all, so then I’m not hungry, so I’m not eating as much, and then I’m even more low energy, and so on. I actually lost 5 pounds the first trimester because of my loss of appetite and probably a loss of muscle as well. But I’m totally okay with that (and my doctor said it’s normal because of loss of appetite or women losing weight due to morning sickness). I’m genuinely just thrilled and grateful to be growing a tiny human!
Do you have any pregnancy cravings or aversions?
Like I mentioned above, I’ve basically lost my appetite in general. But there have definitely been some aversions… particularly meat! Now, when Jay cooks raw chicken or ground beef, I have to excuse myself from the kitchen or I sometimes even won’t eat it because it’s just too much lol. As far as cravings go, I’ve definitely had a few: ice cold water (I typically only drink room temp), ALL of the fruit, spicy things (sweet chili Dorito’s and mac-n-cheese with tabasco to name a few), and sweet treats like ice cream or chocolate (I typically opt for salty over sweet). It’s been pretty funny to watch my body, appetite, and preferences change in this first trimester, for sure.
What pregnancy products are you using so far?
Not a lot yet since, physically, not much has changed and we haven’t started prepping for Baby’s arrival with any products or anything yet. A few things I’ve used though are:
Do you plan on finding out the gender? Do you and Jay have a preference?
Yes! We’re so eager to find out! I’m a planner and Jay’s a dreamer, so we’re not the type of couple that can wait until the baby’s born. And I’m sure everyone says this, but we truly don’t have a preference on gender. We’ve always said it’d be nice to have a boy and a girl, but we don’t lean strongly one way or another. We know God will give us exactly what we’re supposed to have and that He’s been prepping/is still prepping us to be girl parents or boy parents, and we’re going to be thrilled to be either 🙂
What are you and Jay most nervous about during your pregnancy?
At this point, I think we both just want a healthy baby. There are so many scary things that can happen during pregnancy, so we praying for a healthy baby and mama throughout this process!
What are you and Jay most excited about during your pregnancy?
Oh gosh, so many things – Finding out the gender, feeling the first movements, decorating the nursery, baby showers with our friends and family, naming him or her, creating the registry, and simply planning for and dreaming about our life with a new family member. We’re excited to see how our marriage grows during this season of pregnancy and even more excited to step into parenthood together to figure out everything (the good, the bad, the sleeplessness, you name it!) alongside each other. We’ve heard parenthood adds a whole new dynamic to your marriage and your love towards your spouse, so that will be really cool to see.
What was the best part of your first trimester?
A few things – First, telling Jay was the most special moment. We’ve talked about and prayed over our family for a while, so to tell him and have it all become so very real was just the sweetest experience. Secondly, telling our friends and families was so fun. I think a lot of people knew we were going to be entering into this season soon, but it didn’t take away from the joy we got to share with everyone! Lastly, going to our first appointment together and hearing the baby’s heartbeat was simply incredible. We had no idea you could hear a heartbeat so early on in pregnancy, so we were genuinely shocked and ecstatic to hear our son/daughter’s little heartbeat going strong!
Have I talked (typed) your ear off yet? This has been such an incredible experience thus far, and it’s really fun to document everything for myself, Jay, our friends and family, our social media friends that we’ve never met, and for Baby Howard. Hopefully documenting some of these things is helpful for anyone else in a similar season, but most importantly, I pray that documenting these things is something sweet that Jay and I can look back on with Baby Howard to let him/her know how much we cherished this season!