For 5 years I yo-yoed trying to lose the same 20 pounds. It was so frustrating and I’ve written many times about how discouraged I felt after years of success. Part of me was like, we can’t even think about a second kid until I “lose the baby weight”.
How many times in my life have I told myself, “I will be happy when I lose XXX amount of weight”. Or “I will be happy when I am a size 6.” Well before Logan I was a size 10. After Logan I was a size 12. My body never really “bounced back”–it changed shape. Stuff fit weirdly. My hips were wider. I had diastasis recti that no amount of weight lifting and PT seemed to fix…
We bought our new house 2 years ago with the intention of adding to our family. We needed something a little bigger (we had long grown out of our old 1200 square foot ranch) with one more bedroom. Then stuff happened. A lot of stuff happened. We’d talk about trying to get pregnant, then something else would happen. Like the list of shit that has happened to us in the past 2 years is too long and exhausting to even write about.
But we went to Hawaii for my 40th birthday and decided it was time to just DO IT. And guess what the universe did?? It created a Pandemic. LOL Gee thanks.
When I had my birthday this year we talked about it again and the conversation was more like “the window is literally closing” on whether we were going to do this or not. I started to think, why are we waiting for the “perfect time”? There really is NEVER a perfect time. This time is as good as any. We have a house, we have jobs. Logan is starting kindergarten in the fall and daycare costs will be cut in half. It is now or never.
With Logan it took 5 months of trying. This time it took 4 months. I am feeling grateful that it wasn’t hard or that it took longer because of my age. I know secondary infertility is a really hard thing and I have several friends who have experienced that and it’s heartbreaking.
First Trimester
Since we’d been trying for a few months and I was tracking everything, it wasn’t too much of a surprise. (Other than the week leading up to a positive test I was 100% positive my period was coming because I was having such bad cramps!) When I was late and started taking daily tests to check, I still didn’t believe it!
With Logan, my morning sickness started at Week 6/Week 8 and lasted until like Week 18. It was brutal. I never actually threw up. Instead, I had 24/7 nausea and felt like I was going to throw up. All day, all night, all the time. Nothing helped. I basically lived on toast, crackers, ginger candy, grilled cheese sandwiches. I had aversions to coffee, salad, meat, seafood, almost everything really. Except carbs.
I looked up my old posts (what a walk down memory lane!!) and apparently I craved lemonade in the first trimester. This time too! I totally forgot about that.
This time:
*Craving lemonade and raisin cinnamon English muffins (which is weird because I don’t really like raisins).
Week 4
*the bloating started. It was really intense. All of a sudden no pants fit!
*I started having random waves of nausea–but it wasn’t consistent so I don’t call it morning sickness (yet).
*I started to feel REALLY full immediately after eating, even if I did not eat very much food.
Week 5
*A lot of the symptoms got better, but I was suddenly exhausted.
Week 6
*I had another blood test to check my levels. All good. Exhausted. Taking a 20 min nap every day during my lunch break.
*Feeling famished.
I went through my old maternity clothes and checked to see sizing etc. A lot of it will work again this time. Some of it didn’t fit (they were small maternity or medium sized regular clothes that I used as maternity clothes)
Week 7
*Exhausted and nauseated. Really thirsty.
Week 8
*Still exhausted and nauseated.
*Not sleeping great at night, tossing and turning, restless legs, etc.
*Had our first doctor visit and ultrasound. Dating is correct. Got to see the heartbeat but not hear it (yet).
*Definitely starting to show! (I think I started showing with Logan at Week 13 or something?)
Week 9
*Week 9, Day 1 was rough–spent most of the day in bed resting and napping. Felt really sick! Symptoms got a little better the rest of the week. Except for headaches. Horrible headaches!! According to Google, Week 9 is considered the “worst week of pregnancy” gee…great!
*Less famished. I don’t need to snack on something every 2 hours like the first few weeks! Craving cereal!
*We told family this week! Everyone was surprised and excited!
*Had a scare this week but ultrasound showed everything was ok, for now.
Week 10
*Midwife referred me to get acupuncture for nausea, so started that this week. It might be helping?
*Got the blood work done for all the testing–and we had the option to find out the gender! We didn’t have that option with Logan!
*Appetite is leveling out, which is good because I gained more weight than I wanted to for the first trimester (thanks carbs).
Week 11
*Almost out of the first trimester and really hoping the nausea and fatigue alleviate soon!
*After a LONG 10 days, we got the genetic testing results back–all low risk–and it’s a GIRL!
Week 12
*Still nauseated a lot of the time but not every day. I still eat a lot of carbs, crackers and ginger ale.
*Been craving olives lately. Which is funny because with Logan I despised all pickled things (which were my favorite pre-pregnancy!)
*Bought a few baby girls clothes 🙂 Got another bag full from my Buy Nothing Group on Facebook and we have so many cute things now!
*Had our OB appointment and got another ultrasound and got to hear the heartbeat. We took a short video of it to show Logan and he was over the moon excited.
Week 13
*Nausea is getting better! Yay!
*We told everyone our news!
*Happy the first trimester is over!! Ready to feel better. 🙂
Vickie
I did not realize about second try/baby infertility until I started listening to Happier in Hollywood. They are both all about saving eggs because both waited too long for their seconds.
My understanding is the nausea comes from blood sugar instability. The carbs and sugars we crave spike us up and we feel better, but when the blood sugar dips, and that causes nausea. So the trick is to eat less carbs and eat something with the carbs that helps stabilize blood sugar.
I had severe nausea every single day of my second pregnancy. I craved oj and did not know better. So that was part of my problem. In retrospect I think I could have eaten differently and controlled much, but probably not all, of it. That daughter is now 27. I have read a lot on the subject since, but had no idea then. And my doctor did not know either.
Glad things are going well. How exciting.
Is kindergarten half day? Full day? After school care?
Lisa Eirene
Kindergarten is all day, early release once a week and then he goes to his daycare after school. We might just have him come home but we are waiting to see how the schedule and returning to work thing happens.