I’m so excited to share this blog (and this news, perhaps) with you guys! I’ve been taking notes for this post on and off since early October, when the little bundle of multiplying cells in my uterus started KICKING MY BUTT. As some of you may know, I am Host to a small future baby, due in June, and could not be more excited and terrified. And, well, I have THOUGHTS. For this first post, I want to talk about the first trimester – or, as I like to call it, the Hellmester. Think Hellmouth, but where Sunnydale is your pathetic human body and the demonic energy threatening to destroy the world as we know it is the fetus that you made on purpose.

I’ve been waiting to post this, not just until the first trimester was over, but until I could look back on it from a safe place where I could sit upright for hours at a time and almost always keep my food down. I’m happy to report that life after Hellmester does exist, and that future baby and I are back on speaking terms. More on that in my 2^nd trimester recap.

The first trimester is a conceptually miraculous time, filled with momentous milestones and some real God-like shenanigans happening inside you. But for probably 80% of women or more, it also totally sucks! I needed a lot of support – both external, internal, and pharmaceutical – to get me through. And even with that support, it was still one of the loneliest, and worst times of my life — while also being the beginning of my most exciting adventure. It’s … tricky like that. Let’s dig in.

It Begins

Building a baby is not for suckers. Building a baby is for closers. At barely-any-days pregnant, I knew I was expecting because I’d been tracking my cycle like a stalker and had brought a test with me on my very belated honeymoon. After we found out, I had a parting drink (or two) and tried not to jinx myself by getting ahead of myself. A little later, at four weeks pregnant, I told my mom because I could no longer carry the anxiety of early pregnancy alone (not counting my husband). I bought What to Expect When You’re Expecting and a bunch of almonds and cheese so I could eat right for maximum baby building success. I made a workout plan and kept a record of every 8 ounces of water I consumed per day. I was so ready for this.

Then, on exactly the first day of the 5^th week of pregnancy, Hellmester truly began.

Turns out I was not ready. Babies are for closers. I was not a closer.

How To Ensure The Survival Of Your Species

It’s no secret that pregnant people rarely tell you the Whole Truth about baby making and having. There are many potential reasons for this, not the least of which is ensuring the survival of the species. Other possible explanations include:

1. You are brainwashed by your physician or midwife immediately after the birth, Get Out style.
2. New moms are basically the freshmen who pledged the fraternity last year, and if they had to get hazed, you’re getting hazed, too.
3. New moms are nice and don’t want to terrify you.

I personally think it’s #2. If someone were to come tell me about their Easy Breezy Unicorn Pregnancy now? I might be tempted to make them strip naked and run sprints around campus in the snow. Just so I knew they were really serious about this whole motherhood thing.

Right now, I think it’d be hard to forget Hellmester, even as the days of the second trimester are already blurring together. But who knows. This much I do know: life will out. I spent a not insignificant amount of time during Hellmester googling things like “are only children happier?” I always envisioned having at least two kids, and would have loved three if I’d started earlier. When you have three siblings, it’s hard to imagine what life would be like with zero. I don’t know who I’d be without mine. Still, for about 10-11 weeks I was CERTAIN that I could not do this again. I was terrified of losing the pregnancy, for all the usual reasons, but also because I knew I might never try again. And yet, by the end of Hellmester, once I made it to the other side, I was already thinking about how I would get through this “next time.”

Well played, homo sapiens. Well played.

Why So Hellish?

My therapist told me pregnancy is a good first lesson in parenting. And that lesson is: you are no longer in control. During Hellmester, even as my body was doing this really cool thing FOR me, it fully turned AGAINST me. And in ways that made no sense. Do you want to get born or WHAT, baby?

I have read about possible biological reasons for morning sickness – which to me seems like a pretty cute term for “debilitating nausea and vomiting, which is probably much worse in the morning but not necessarily.” One theory is that back in the day, when food was not the safest, making all food abhorrent to you – and ejecting much of the food you did manage to eat – protected you from accidentally eating spoiled boar or what have you, and endangering yourself and the fetus. Makes sense, but it doesn’t quite explain why some women experience Nausea and Vomiting of Pregnancy (a more accurate term, but definitely lacks that brand recognition) and others don’t. Or why Kate Middleton, who suffered from the worst type of morning sickness, hyperemesis gravidarum, ever had more than one child.

I have some other theories:

1. Babies’ sole goal is world domination, and they’re willing to destroy you to achieve it.
2. Babies are an elaborate form of terrorism.
3. It’s not that mothers really love their children unconditionally, but that nothing else the child could ever do would be worse than the time he or she constantly poisoned mom from the inside for several months. A strategically brilliant move.

After about a month of managing morning sickness cold turkey – pro tip: keep a chair in the bathroom, so you can puke in comfort — I started taking Unisom (doxylamine succinate), a sleep aid that is widely used to curb morning sickness. Holy Lord. It helped me so much. It was the difference between feeling hungover versus feeling like I had alcohol poisoning and needed my stomach pumped. There are also stronger prescription medications, like Zofran, if the OTC stuff doesn’t help. At the end of the day: JUST TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. If you can make it through Hellmester without Big Pharma, that’s cool, but you’re not a bad future mom if you can’t. Because if you REALLY didn’t want to be drugged, baby, you would have acted right.

I think acupuncture helped, as well, or at least hit me with some of that sweet, sweet placebo effect.

The second whammy of Hellmester is the exhaustion. Again, that seems like a really mild term for something that feels more like “sudden and complete soul-extraction.” You know The Machine, in The Princess Bride? The one that extracts years of life from its victim through a complex system of suction cups and water power? I really relate to that now, on a personal level.

I was extremely lucky at this point to work from home, which as I’ve discussed before, is always great and definitely not soul-crushing. But productivity remained a huge problem. By November, I felt so behind on everything that I finally talked to my bosses about it. They were extremely understanding! For a few weeks after that, I used sick time and worked 6 hour days, which made me feel less guilty, if not more productive. And then, like clockwork, as I got deeper and deeper into the second trimester, the nausea became more manageable, my energy started returning, food became edible again, and I was able to get back on track. We need accommodating work places, not just after babies are born, but while they’re being cooked, too. BUT, that gets me to my next point.

The last whammy of Hellmester (and I’m simplifying the list) is that all this crazy junk is happening, you feel purely insane, everything you love to eat tastes like hot, rotten garbage and even water can become unpalatable, you’re trying to stay fit but your preferred method of transportation would be “wheelchair,” you’re able to accomplish 1-2 tasks per day at most, and … you’re not supposed to tell anyone. Hi. What?

A coworker recently told me that when he and his wife shared their pregnancy news with family members before the end of the first trimester, they were chided for it. GUYS. That’s insane. When you decide to tell friends and family is a very personal decision, and if it relieves stress for you to let a few people – or a lot of people – in on your news before “it’s time,” you should be able to make that decision. If the uncertainty of early pregnancy makes the people you tell uncomfortable, they should imagine how nervous you feel! Or, if you want to keep it a state secret and have one of those Ninja Pregnancies that always shock and delight me on Facebook, have at it.

Luckily no one shamed me for sharing, and I probably told a new person per week starting around 8 weeks, plus every one of my Lyft drivers, mainly because I needed more people to complain to.

Some Coping Mechanisms That Helped Me

Much like Buffy bested the Hellmouth, I survived Hellmester with the help of my family, friends, and maybe a vampire or two. Here are a few of the coping mechanisms I relied on:

A paper chain: Every day of Hellmester felt like an eternity, so it was hard to think about the fact that I wouldn’t receive my baby for 40 entire weeks, not to mention the fact that I wasn’t safely out of the woods yet anyway. So I wasn’t thinking about the ultimate end game. I could barely keep my sights on the short-term end game, which was the end of these godforsaken three months. Instead, each single day that passed was victory enough. That was one more day of still being pregnant, and one less day until the end of Hellmester. I made one of those long paper chains — like a kid waiting for Christmas to come — and sometimes the only highlight of the entire day was cutting off a link of the chain with a pair of sharp scissors. It’s not that I felt instantly better when that last link was cut, but I was getting there, and I haven’t needed a paper chain to get me through the second trimester at all.

Epsom salt baths: I couldn’t stand the smell of soaps or anything with fragrance, but I sometimes took two or three Epsom salt baths a week! Baths are serving me well in the second trimester, too. I might go so far as to say that if you don’t have a bathtub, or a friend or kindly neighbor with a bathtub, maybe you should not get pregnant. This is just my medical advice.

Dancing: I made a Hellmester playlist with really uplifting and/or furious songs. I expect the baby will be born with some pretty sweet moves.

Exercise: I didn’t do much besides go for a daily walk (give or take a few days in between) until 9 or 10 weeks pregnant, but once I had it in me to start stationary biking – and Soul Cycle finally opened in Denver 🙌 – that really helped. I think strenuous exercise shocked and confused my system so much that it took it several hours to remember to feel crappy again.

My Pregnant Posse: Despite starting this baby-making thing a little late, a lot of my friends are on the same schedule, and it’s been a lifesaver. During Hellmester (and still), I texted A LOT with a friend who is one month ahead of me, and another who is one month behind me. It was like a fun game of telephone in which we whispered “it will get better” to each other down the line until it got garbled and came out as “twill kilt feathers.” We’re all safely ensconced in our second and third trimesters now, and I couldn’t be prouder of us.

It Will Get Better

Everybody’s experience of this time is so different. Besides the one person I know who had a nice pregnancy, I’ve heard from another friend who didn’t mind the first trimester, but hated the second. Nevertheless, I think my experience is pretty common, and I hope some of you can relate. I’m also aware that there is something unseemly (to some) about complaining about pregnancy. First, because I chose this special brand of Hell. And second, because many people who want to get pregnant cannot, or can but only at great cost. That is some bullshit, nature. To those friends, I wish a Hellmester and all the rest upon you. Or actually, I wish one of those Easy Breezy Unicorn Pregnancies, because you deserve it.

As for me, I hope my next post is titled “Elaborate Boats and Other Stuff I Built During My Second-Trimester High.” More likely it will be about being bloated all. the. time.