Trials and Tribulations of the First Trimester

Nausea, loss of appetite, pounding headaches, sciatica, painful breasts, pimples and an emerging bump.

Yes, you guessed it, I’m coming up to 12 weeks pregnant and boy does it suck.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that I'm growing a tiny person inside of me that I have already completely fallen in love with, but wow its knocking me for six.

So the first three weeks went by without me even realising. Me and my husband, Andy, had decided to start trying but after hearing numerous stories of couples taking months, if not years, to conceive I did not expect it to happen quite so quickly.

So after the excitement of realising we would become parents and sharing the 'super secret' news with family members, that’s when things began to change.

First came a completely new appetite. In the first few weeks I craved all things fatty and processed including cheesy puffs and popcorn. In contrast to my previous healthy diet of sushi, soup, salads and fresh fish I now wanted nothing but junk food.

Fortunately a few weeks on and now I crave fruit of all kinds but it took a while to begin eating healthy foods again.

Another lovely pregnancy symptom is my nausea. I consider myself to be lucky as I have only actually been sick about five times, but the thought of food makes me gag, so my husband has stopped asking me what I fancy for tea as he just gets a look of disgust.

Now my coping method seems to be to eat something small every hour. As long as I don’t think about it and just eat then I'm fine. This also seems to be the best way of stopping my constant headaches. I guess its completely useless worrying about my figure now.

So this tiny foetus is more than welcome to take everything it needs from my body to grow into a fully formed person but I didn’t expect it to make me feel so completely exhausted.

I have completely given up on having a social life for now. Even on my days off I manage to pop to the shops and I'm done for the day. Not exactly a fun existence. Oh and during that trip to the shops today, just in case it looked like I was having too much fun, my pregnancy sciatica made a reappearance in my left bum cheek.

So all is not peachy at the moment and from my understanding it doesn’t get any easier.

Fortunately the one thing keeping me going is my 12 week scan this Friday. One glance of the tiny human with its pounding heartbeat and I’m sure all will be forgotten.