January 2, 2025

My first trimesters were brutal. I was so nauseous, I threw up every morning for the first half of my pregnancies. I just ate and drank what I could to survive. Both pregnancies were very similar but the stories were different so I will share both.

First pregnancy.

For my first pregnancy I had an office job and as soon as I found out I was pregnant I was just exhausted. Even though I had a desk job I ended up cutting my hours, I just worked 5 hour days for a month and a half. A week after I found out I started to get nauseous, the first week wasn't that bad but weeks 6-8 were just awful. I have never been that nauseous before. Luckily I was able to work from home for those 2 weeks. My husband was exposed to COVID so I was supposed to isolate. It ended up working out because it was so bad some days that I worked from my bed and napped in the middle of the day.

Even though weeks 6-8 were the worst, I was nauseous the entire first trimester. I ate a lot of fruit and I ate microwave taquitos for breakfast because it was the only thing that made me not want to throw up. I also couldn't eat until around 8 or 9 AM because I threw up every morning before that.

I couldn't step foot in the kitchen let alone cook, I couldn’t even watch the cooking channel. All food made me nauseous. If my husband put prepared food in front of me I could eat it but he couldn't even ask me what I wanted without me feeling like I was going to throw up, he had to just prepare it and put it in front of me and then I could eat it. He even made my lunch, he would make it, put it in the fridge and every morning I'd grab it from the fridge as quickly as I could because the sight of food made me nauseous. I started to feel better at the end of first trimester, I wasn't nauseous during the day anymore but I still threw up every morning until about 20 weeks. Around this time I could cut up food or prepare a salad but I still couldn't quite cook. I wasn't able to cook again until 3rd trimester. 

I don't remember a lot of what I ate but it definitely wasn't healthy. It was a lot of frozen prepared food and Egg McMuffins. But eating anything is better than not eating at all. I also had to eat all day, as soon as I got a tiny bit hungry the nausea crept in so there were also a lot of crackers. I also struggled  to drink water, I found out if I drank it from the straw it was more enjoyable. Not sure why that worked.

I would go to work, come home and go to bed. I was that tired.
 

Second pregnancy

 I was nervous to have a second baby with a toddler because I didn't know how I was supposed to take care of him if I was that sick and tired and couldn't look at food again. Also I was serving. Since in my first pregnancy I couldn’t look at or even talk about food without getting nauseous, how was I supposed to deal with food all day? But I got to a point and thought, well if I want another baby, this is what's going to have to happen. 

The first 2 weeks after I found out I was pregnant, I didn’t feel gross at all. I got a burst of energy. Then 6 weeks hit and the nausea and tiredness were back. The tiredness wasn’t nearly as bad but it was there. I went to bed at 7 every night, if I didn’t have a toddler I would have gone earlier though. 

My nausea also wasn’t as bad, I wasn’t bed ridden but there were 2 or 3 weeks where it just lasted the entire day instead of just the morning. Luckily looking or talking about food didn’t make me nauseous but I was still very picky about what I ate. I had to be in the mood for it or it made me nauseous. Work was so nice, since I had to eat all day they would make me half of my meal in the morning and then a few hours later they would make me my second half. I also ate a lot of gas station candy bags because the candy helped with the nausea and Wendy's Junior Deluxe Burgers because they were a perfect snack and I live very close to Wendy's. I don’t think anything truly helps with the nausea but the candy and constantly eating took the edge off.

I again threw up every morning for the first half of my pregnancy. After first trimester I wasn’t nauseous during the day but I was before 9 am. My boss was good about not scheduling me until 9 but there was one day she scheduled me for 8:30 so I went in, clocked in and sat there and ate toast and drank tea until I could work, the other server was cool with it. I couldn’t eat early so I would go to work and then eat plain hash browns as soon as I got there, it was the only thing I wanted to eat and then after that I couldn’t eat them anymore. It was probably a good 8 months before I could eat them again, so funny how it was the only thing I could eat and then after I couldn't even look at it.

It was so cute, Ryden would pretend to throw up in a garbage can because that’s what I was doing. Josh also taught him to rub my back when I was throwing up so that was adorable. 

The exhaustion never went away. I was tired my entire pregnancy, I felt so guilty because Ryden didn’t get a lot of attention from me and there were a lot of tv days. We also started a lot of bad habits because I was too tired to argue with him. I let him push me around and do whatever he wanted. I have to say a toddler and newborn is easier than a toddler and being pregnant.