My Pregnancy Journey: Part 2

In part one of my pregnancy journey, I shared about my journey to health and pregnancy. In this post, I share about my pregnancy, including how I felt, ate, and exercised, and some of the challenges of being a mother in this day and age.

I’m currently sitting in my makeshift home gym/office space while Isaac naps in the next room. Now that he is twelve weeks, he is settling into a good sleep routine, both at night and at nap time. He is a sweet, calm baby, and we feel incredibly lucky in so many ways.

I just finished a workout and am finding little pockets of time in my day to write and create. Some days, Isaac sits in his bouncer and watches me in the kitchen or kicks out in his activity gym while I create a recipe (I will be sharing my first in a long time very soon). Other days, I type while he naps. I am doing my very best to avoid him seeing his parents behind screens, be it a smartphone screen or a computer screen. It goes without saying, then, that all of my computer time occurs while he naps!

I left off in part one of my pregnancy journey with my positive pregnancy test and I discussed a few of the action steps that I had taken in the months leading up to it that I believe helped us conceive so easily, despite the fact that we definitely weren’t trying for a baby.

In this post, I’ll be discussing everything that occurred in the eight months after that. For those who have never been pregnant, gestation is counted from the first day of your last menstrual period, so women with a regular cycle typically find out that they are pregnant around four weeks, after they miss a period.

To be perfectly honest, I thought that my period was late because I had been running a lot more in the month leading up to getting pregnant. I had just started training for a half marathon and thought that perhaps I was putting too much stress on my system and needed to reassess my training. But I decided to take a pregnancy test a day after my period was supposed to arrive, just in case. So you can imagine my shock when two pink lines appeared.

I actually didn’t tell anyone just yet. This was very challenging, but I wanted a couple of days to sit with my feelings and figure out how I was going to tell both Yannick and my family. I eventually broke the news around five and a half weeks. Also, my sister in law announced that she and my brother were expecting their second baby when I was five weeks and she was seven weeks. Her due date ended up being nine days before mine, and her baby ended up also being born just one day after her due date!

Initially, I felt great and thought that I was going to have the easiest pregnancy ever because “I’m so fit and healthy!” Ha! Was I ever mistaken. Right around five and a half weeks, I was knocked down by the most intense fatigue I have ever experienced in my life. Any time I had a spare few hours, I would find myself in bed for an afternoon nap. And I have never been a napper. I would attempt to work out and even ten pound dumbbells felt heavy.

At the same time, I was hit by some wild food aversions and all of my favourite foods suddenly became absolutely revolting. I could not so much as smell eggs. The sight of red meat would bring on a bout of nausea. Essentially, many of the nutrient-dense foods that I knew I should be eating looked, smelled, and tasted repulsive. Knowing the importance of good nutrition, I did not want to only eat simple carbs. I also knew that some protein would help with the nausea and aversions that I was experiencing. I relied heavily on yogurt and chicken to satisfy my protein requirements during this time, as they were the only two proteins that were mildly appealing.

Thankfully, I did not experience severe morning sickness–only some minor nausea and intense food aversions. These lasted until I was ten weeks pregnant. By twelve weeks, my appetite came back with a vengeance and I was able to eat pretty much everything again. My energy also started to come back right around that time. I started to get into a routine of doing pregnancy-friendly workouts and walking. I opted not to run during my pregnancy because it just didn’t feel great. Walking felt great, but running, not so much.

I had started my personal trainer certification through the International Sports Sciences Association prior to getting pregnant and I ended up completing it as well as a running coach certification early on in my first trimester. However, at that time, I did not have the energy to change jobs and start at the bottom as a personal trainer. As anyone who has ever worked in a commercial gym knows, personal training requires a ton of time and energy investment in the beginning. Energy is not something that I had in abundance, so I opted to stick with my job and put personal training on the back burner until after my baby was born.

I was lucky enough to find a midwife at nine weeks. Midwives are hard to come by and there are often long waitlists in our city. I was on the fence about getting any ultrasounds during pregnancy because I had read about the risks that come along with them. A part of me isn’t certain that I made the right decision about getting any ultrasounds at all. I know that they can serve a purpose in some situations, but I believe that they are overused and can create unnecessary stress and hysteria in a perfectly normal and healthy pregnancy.

I ended up having a dating ultrasound at twelve weeks, and I was indeed measuring twelve weeks and three days at that point. It was a relief to know that there was a perfectly healthy baby growing in my womb with a strong heartbeat. I think reality set in for both of us in that ultrasound office. We were going to be parents of this little bean in six short months!

We made some special memories in the timespan between that dating ultrasound and the halfway point of my pregnancy. Notably, Yannick ran the half marathon in my place, and we celebrated my dad’s 60th birthday in the Adirondacks. I also started to feel the first movements of my baby around 15 weeks. They felt like little air bubbles in my lower abdomen at first, and started to increase in strength as the weeks went on. By 18 weeks, I was feeling them pretty regularly throughout the day.

I opted to have an anatomy scan at the halfway point of my pregnancy. I’ve realized that I’m the kind of person who deals with a lot of anxiety about the health of my baby during pregnancy. I think that this is quite common with first pregnancies, and I’m sure that I will be much more confident and relaxed in subsequent pregnancies. It turns out that baby boy was camera shy and didn’t want to show his face at the first anatomy scan, so we ended up having to go in for a second one. You can imagine that I was not particularly keen to have him exposed to another 20-30 minutes of ultrasound radiation, but I relented and we had a second one where he showed his face and all was well. And we also found out that we were having a boy!

To add to that, I dealt with white coat syndrome all throughout my pregnancy. I have never liked medical settings and get super nervous before any sort of appointment. My blood pressure was always on the higher side at my midwife appointments–never high enough to cause concern, but definitely at the higher end of what is considered “normal.”

The remainder of my pregnancy was fairly uneventful. I felt really good and energetic all throughout second and third trimester, despite being knocked down by a bout of the flu at the beginning of July and again at the beginning of August. The plus side was that I was able to watch most of the summer Olympics while resting on the couch! My mom hosted a lovely baby shower at the beginning of October and I realized just how loved baby boy already was!

My bump was actually quite small until the third trimester and I became tired of people commenting on how tiny I looked. I starting to internalize the comments (all of which came from complete strangers) and began to worry that my baby was indeed too small. I don’t know why people feel entitled to comment on a woman’s body at any point during pregnancy. Pregnancy is an especially vulnerable time in a woman’s life, and comments about her body are highly unwelcome during this time.

Physically, I never felt uncomfortable at all in the third trimester. I stayed very active, which definitely helped. I continued with my workouts, yoga, and walks. Baby was growing a lot towards the end, and I was frequently hungry. Despite not being able to eat quite as much as usual at meals due to the baby taking up so much space, I ate much more frequently and would often wake up in the wee hours of the morning in need of a snack. My go-to snack was a homemade oat bar and a bowl of sheep yogurt.

I continued working until 34 weeks. At that point, I decided that I no longer wanted to be on my feet for 8 hours and dealing with the public every day. I needed some time to rest and get the oxytocin flowing for labour and birth. This time was very special. I was able to catch up on my sleep, do my postpartum meal prep, and spend lots of quality time with loved ones.

And then, as you read in my birth story post, I went into labour one day after my due date and Isaac came into the world 17 hours later.

So far, the most challenging aspect of motherhood has been striking a balance between being fully present for my son–where I know my heart and soul are meant to be–and investing time into Up Beet Kitchen and my nutrition and health coaching education. We live in Canada, where single income families are becoming rarer because the cost of living is so exorbitant and becoming higher every year. While being a full-time mom has always been my dream and feels like my highest calling, I am not sure if or when that will be achievable for our family. For now, it seems like our best bet will be for me to continue growing the food blog side of Up Beet Kitchen and starting my fitness, nutrition and health coaching business once I complete my education. This way, I can be at home with Isaac and whatever other babies we might be blessed with in the future while still making an income.