Pregnancy is Hard

Follow this blog on Pinterest

Well, I spilled the beans on Instagram a couple weeks ago…

Who doesn't love a giant teddy bear in a nursery?! 😉 Remember that time I didn't blog for like 8 weeks? Oh yea, it's still happening… I wasn't just taking some time off. I didn't blog because vegetables made me nauseous, which I never thought I'd ever say in my entire life! I am happy to say I have officially made it through the first trimester of pregnancy! 😊💕 oh, and I can eat vegetables again so maybe you'll see some blog posts coming out soon. At least until May 3 when I'm going to have another human to take care of other than @ehlekylej 😍 details to come!

A photo posted by Alysia L. Ehle, PhD (@slim_sanity) on Nov 19, 2015 at 5:29pm PST

While part of the blog hiatus I took was indeed for a bit of ‘soul searching,’ it was mostly because all I could manage to do was sleep, eat, work and repeat.

The first trimester of pregnancy is HARD. I like to classify it as the opposite of sunshine and rainbows.

It’s utterly amazing to me how women can be affected by pregnancy so differently. A few of my close friends didn’t have any kind of sickness at all. I generalize it as ‘sickness’ because it is most definitely NOT just morning sickness. I experienced all-day nausea. The only foods I could eat were bagels, Ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches. For almost a month straight. The mere thought of seeing a picture of broccoli on Instagram made my stomach curdle even more. I couldn’t work out over this time because I felt so sick. I slept 10-11 hours every day. I cried a lot because I felt so miserable. I’m pretty sure my co-workers thought I had the plague. Kyle was a trooper helping me get through it, and I could tell he felt awful too because there was literally nothing he could do other than toast my bagels and put me to bed at 7 PM.

The CRAZY part about the first trimester is that I didn’t even have it as bad as some women. Some women are hospitalized from dehydration because they literally can’t keep any kind of food down. I suppose for that, I can consider myself lucky.

I’m not writing this post to get sympathy or anything like that. It’s simply to state some facts to anyone who might not know what pregnancy women have to go through to grow a human being. Maybe it will make someone else feel better for having to go through a similar situation. I can tell you one thing for sure, I was completely naive to the rough weeks ahead of me when I peed on a stick last August.

I can tell you another thing, too…it can be really hard to be excited about being pregnant when you feel like death 24/7. And that can almost make you feel worse. Sure, Kyle and I had ‘planned’ to have a baby as best as you can plan it. It wasn’t a surprise. We were ready to start a family.

Luckily, around week 10 or 11 I was able to start eating healthy again. That is one thing I truly believe you need to do during pregnancy. I was sad I couldn’t eat healthy for my growing baby for 4–5 weeks, but I know I won’t have a problem continuing to do so until she’s born. But even now that I’m (finally) feeling better and more like a human being, there are plenty parts of pregnancy that are freakin’ hard.

I can’t physically workout like a could before I was pregnant, and it makes me sad and feel slightly lethargic. I get tired very easily, and working out can wipe away my energy instead of bringing me more. I can’t take medications when I’m sick, or even dose up on Emergen-c. The way I socialize with people is completely different. I miss being able to drink a glass of wine. NO I’m not an alcoholic but I do enjoy a good wine buzz. I miss being able to stay awake after 8:30 PM. I feel bored a lot of the time which is probably the worst of it all.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m beyond excited to grow our family. Telling our families has been exciting, and we’re starting to put our nursery together. But when the reality of a child isn’t tangible yet, and at 18 weeks you still don’t feel your baby move (which is totally normal for a first pregnancy), you start to wonder why the hell you’re going through this to begin with. Obviously that is a little bit dramatic, but you get the point. Your whole life is changing and with your first child you can’t grasp the benefits of putting yourself through nine months of pregnancy is all about.

I’m also a tiny bit cynical and I’ve never been super emotional, so other women out there may have to take these words with a grain of salt. 🙂 I’m 100% certain I’ll go through pregnancy at least one more time in my life (God willing), so there is obviously truth to it all being ‘worth it’ in the end, despite my stubbornness to admit that I’ll forget the horror that is first trimester.

For now I’ll keep truckin’ through until May 3. Unless she (we think it’s a she) decides to grace us with her presence earlier than that, say last week of April. I won’t be mad about that!