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I had no idea how hard the first trimester of pregnancy was. Somehow, I always thought I’d be one of those people who was just enamored by the whole process of being pregnant. It’s funny in retrospect. It would be an understatement to say that I’m not particularly gifted in tolerating discomfort. So I find it almost comical that both my husband and I thought I’d simply excel at pregnancy.
Suffice it to say I walked into the first trimester of pregnancy fairly naive. And the more I talk to others about this, the more I realize just how common this is. We don’t really talk about how hard pregnancy is. We focus on the excitement, the joy, the anticipation, and yet we fail as a culture to hold space for the shadow side of pregnancy.
I’ve wanted to be a mom for as long as I can remember. It’s a desire I have never questioned or wavered on. After my husband and I got married this summer, we entered into the process of conception with intentionality and care.
For months prior I had already been dreaming into this time, connecting with the spirit of this baby in ritual space. When we were ready to conceive my husband and I did a ritual together, calling this baby in. And we were lucky enough to conceive quickly and easefully, something for which I am truly grateful.
About six weeks into the pregnancy in early October of last year, soon after finding out I was indeed pregnant, the easeful feelings started to shift. I expected morning sickness - but somehow I imagined it actually being contained to the mornings. I quickly learned just how much of a misnomer the name for this condition is.
Writing this, on the other side of the worst of the symptoms, I notice I’m already wearing rose-coloured glasses. It wasn’t that bad, I’m telling myself. But it was that bad. When I was in it, in the depths of that first trimester, it was one of the hardest and darkest experiences of my life.
From six to sixteen weeks, I was extremely nauseous, all day every day. Thankfully I was able to keep food down, but I was incredibly limited in what I could stomach. For a week I lived off of primarily Goldfish crackers and yogurt. The next week the only thing I could stomach were samosas (weird, I know) from a particular grocery store. The week after that, it was frozen waffles.
I had devoured the book Real Food for Pregnancy before getting pregnant, and had every intention to eat in the way I believed would best support my growing baby. But throughout that first trimester the bar quickly lowered and I was happy if I could eat anything at all.
The fatigue was also intense. I found myself sleeping for ten to twelve hours a night, and still needing a two hour nap in the middle of the afternoon. And the chronic headaches I have experienced most of my life became worse, and more consistent.
My visual vestibular mismatch - a pre-existing neurological disorder I have - flared, likely due to the nausea and fatigue, and my brain’s inability to compensate. This means that looking at screens or anything else requiring close focus, at all, made me incredibly dizzy and intensified the nausea.
For two months I couldn’t watch TV, use my phone, or even read books. It felt like all the comfort and distraction measures I would usually turn to had been stripped from me. And it drastically impacted my ability to show up for my work - most of which, takes place on my computer screen. While sick, I had to completely change my business model and switch from screen-heavy work to more client work, which triggered less dizziness, so I could continue to earn my share of the income that my family relies on.
I also found myself incredibly detached and disconnected from the baby, and from the whole idea of wanting to be a parent. I was trying to explain to how I was feeling at the time, eleven weeks into my pregnancy - which now feels like a life time ago - and I wrote this:
I *want* to be excited, and I feel like I *should* be excited. And on some intellectual or hypothetical level, I am excited. But I don't feel that way. I just feel sad, and depressed, and alone, and scared that it's never going to end. I'm holding onto hope that sometime in the next few weeks to two months, the symptoms will ease as is often the case in the second trimester, but I also know a number of people who felt like this their whole pregnancy, and I honestly don't know how to keep showing up to this for any kind of prolonged period of time.
I'm super not okay. And I spend all day most days pretending to be okay for other people. And I'm so tired and depleted and lonely and scared and sad.
By about thirteen weeks, the nausea started to ease a little bit. And it made way for the prenatal depression (which I didn’t know was a thing) to waltz right on in. On the day we were going to hear the heartbeat for the first time I woke up crying. I couldn’t stop sobbing all day. I was so afraid I wouldn’t be excited to hear my baby’s heartbeat. I was so disconnected from the desired identity of mother that I had carried for so long. I was detached from experiences of excitement and joy. The expectation of what I thought pregnancy would feel like and the reality of pregnancy were existing on two different planes entirely.
I found myself swimming in shame and darkness. I spent hours every day crying. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pull myself together. And the way I was feeling, the toll I knew all this sadness was taking on my nervous system, and therefore on my baby, was making me spiral into even greater shame.
I pulled myself together to show up for my clients. But inside my body, my heart, and my relationship, things were the rockiest they had been in years. I talked to my midwife about how I was doing, really, and she advised that I go back on SSRIs. Together we made the decision that the impact on the baby of me feeling so detached, disconnected and debilitated by depression far outweighed the minor risk of being on anti-depressants.
Around sixteen weeks, the nausea started to clear, and I went back on escitalopram. This is not a decision we took lightly. I had gone off SSRIs many months before we started trying to get pregnant, for that reason. But now, I was faced with the pressing need to be on the anti-depressants once again. All the old shame voices came back. You’re a therapist. You should know how to handle this on your own.
At one point, Dexter looked at me lovingly and said, “Maybe you really just don’t have enough serotonin in your brain”. I felt a cloak of relief fall over me in a way I haven’t regarding this topic before. Even though I understood this previously on an intellectual level, something about hearing these words spoken out loud made it finally sink in. Maybe this isn’t my fault. Maybe this is something that is, at least in part, out of my control.
I talked to multiple medical professionals, but the consensus was fairly unanimous. It was way better for both me and baby to be back on anti-depressants.
I took some time to check-in with the baby too, holding my hands on my womb, and asking what they wanted me to do. The voice I heard back spoke loud and clear: “I just need you to love me. So do whatever you need to love me better.” That was the only answer I needed.
I’m twenty-one weeks pregnant now. And I am so excited. I feel so deeply connected to this baby growing inside of me.
The worst of the early pregnancy symptoms have passed. I’m still nauseous a lot of the time, but it’s relatively minor, and only sometimes gets in the way of my ability to eat. The fatigue is still significant, and I often need to nap during the day, but that too feels manageable. And the dizziness caused by my neurological condition has totally cleared. I am so grateful to be able to work, and write, and watch shows, and read books again.
But most of all, I’m happy. I’m so excited to welcome this new life into our family, a feeling I wasn’t even remotely able to access until just a few weeks ago.
The first trimester of pregnancy is no joke. While it varies from person to person, with some experiencing only very minor symptoms, and others having them extend much further throughout the pregnancy than I did, it’s harder than a lot of us expect.
And for those of us who experience prenatal depression on top of the nausea and fatigue, it feels like we’re living on a different planet. For those ten weeks, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to be a mom - something I have never felt in my entire life. And yet here I was, on the cusp of motherhood, doubting and questioning everything. Those ten weeks, the intensity with which the depression took hold of me and pulled me under, were some of the hardest of my life - perhaps the hardest. And they were certainly some of the hardest for my relationship.
Now that I am here, on the other side of the toughest part of that particular chapter of this journey, I would choose to walk through the darkness again. I want this baby so badly now. And we may choose to walk that particular path again in the future. Although this time, my eyes will be wide open, and I’ll know what to expect and can therefore plan to support myself accordingly.
We rarely discuss how difficult pregnancy can be. We focus primarily on the joy, the excitement, and the anticipation. And in doing so, we often alienate and isolate the people who are going through it and having an intensely different experience than society expects.
I wonder if we talked about these things more openly, if more of us would feel supported, held, and able to be honest about our struggles. I wonder what would have been different if I had known how hard that particular chapter could be. Maybe nothing would have changed. Maybe something. I can’t know for sure; it’s all just speculation. But I do know that not talking about these things, doesn’t help.
Whether or not you’ve been pregnant, or never plan to be, this is rite of passage that so many people go through. I’ve done a poor job in the past of supporting my pregnant friends because I just didn’t know how hard it was. And now that I do, I never want to turn my back on a pregnant mama again.
If you have been pregnant, I’d love to know what your experience was like. All experiences are welcome - whether they were easier or harder than mine. The more stories we can tell and share about this, the more we can normalize the spectrum of experiences we have.
And if you haven’t been pregnant, is there another experience in your life that has felt similarly - isolating because people don’t talk about what it’s like. Let’s name some of those that need to be spoken about more freely too.
Your story is so wonderful! Having never been a mom - for many many reasons, mostly my choice - it seems to me from what many friends over the years have told me, there is also a certain level or sense of grief with pregnancy.
And NO ONE ever talks about out that either, we are not a grief oriented society. However, life is changing forever. After having a child, we never go back to being who we were before. It is an inevitable loss, and a choice, but nonetheless a loss. Life changes! Generally for the better, of course, but the level of freedom is just different, and responsibility. It is no longer “just you.”
Many women have shared this with me over the years....and their fear of talking about it since they know judgement will follow. And guilt.
So there is that, and in the big picture, it is all normal and all good....a both/and as I like to say.
You will be a lovely mom.....your child has already spoken....just love me. ❤️
Congratulations on your pregnancy, which feels strange to say after reading how hard it’s been. I’m glad you are naming the struggle, I agree that we need to. I’m grateful that my two pregnancies weren’t bad. I had some light nausea but overall no issues. What was hardest for me were the baby years. Looking back I can see that I struggled so much more than I let on.