When I first found out that I was pregnant, I was overjoyed! My husband and I had been trying for almost a year and it was such a relief to finally see a plus sign on the pregnancy test.
That first week was pretty interesting though... I was less than 5 weeks pregnant, my stomach was still flat, and the morning sickness hadn’t kicked in yet, so I really felt completely normal; completely normal except that all of a sudden I wasn’t allowed to drink my coffee in the morning or have a couple glasses of wine in the evening or eat sushi on a dinner date with my husband. Suddenly I am Google searching everything to find out what products and foods are safe to use during pregnancy and which aren’t. I’m taking things that seem very healthy (like sprouts and green juice) out of my diet because they aren’t recommended in pregnancy and overnight, I am going from eating my pescatarian diet which consisted of quite a bit of seafood to a mostly vegetarian diet because it’s not recommended to have more than 2 servings of seafood a week when pregnant either. It was honestly a lot to process all at once! You know things are going to change once you’re pregnant but then it happens and everything needs to change INSTANTLY. There is no break in period.
As soon as I started to figure it all out around week 6, the morning sickness set in. No one tells you that for some people morning sickness is actually ALL DAY sickness. It’s just like an ongoing nausea that gets worse at certain parts of the day but never actually goes away. Add to that my constant dizziness and you basically have how I felt for the entire first trimester of pregnancy. But life doesn’t stop happening just because you don’t feel good. I still had daily classes, private lessons, workshops, and teacher trainings to teach. Showing up to work was difficult but demonstrating yoga poses was nearly impossible. Any time I would fold forward or twist my body in any sort of way, the nausea and dizziness got worse and so I had to train myself to teach without demonstrating anything. It was a very good exercise in creativity and communication! J Probably the hardest part of all was just wanting to be able to share the news with my students but having to keep it to myself as it was still too early.
Another really interesting aspect of feeling sick all the time was that I didn’t have the energy to do the things I used to do. I didn’t have the energy (or stomach!) to exercise so I basically stopped exercising for eight weeks... Yes, 8 weeks! Physical activity is a central aspect of my life, and I generally get a pretty intense work out in 5+ times per week. To go from that type of lifestyle to suddenly sleeping in (often 10-12 hours of sleep per night!), napping during the day, and sitting around reading whenever I didn’t need to be at work was a pretty weird transition.
While the first trimester was pretty rough for me, there were also a lot of life lessons blended in there and some truly positive things that came out of these past few months, other than the most obvious benefit, a beautiful human life growing inside me!! So far my son has taught me:
⁃ It’s okay for things to be a little messy and imperfect.
I didn’t have the energy to neurotically prepare as much as I normally do before leading a class or workshop or training and, incredibly, I still did a great job. This helped me to realize that I waste a lot of energy going over things again and again and again, trying to make them perfect, when they are already excellent.
⁃ I learned how to relax.
I think this was my very favorite part about the first trimester because I am a terrible relaxer. I think people assume that I’m a very zen person because I am a yoga teacher but actually I practice yoga BECAUSE I am the opposite of relaxed. I am always multitasking. Even when I am watching TV, I’m also folding my laundry, entering data into Quickbooks, fielding emails, preparing my dinner, and thinking about the next project I’m going to do. I normally have a really hard time just sitting still. During the first trimester of this pregnancy though, I was so sick and so tired all the time that I literally didn’t have the energy to do anything so I really would just sit for hours. Just sit and read. Or just sit and do nothing. No agenda. Just being. It was like a super long meditation!
⁃ I stopped stressing.
All of the little details of things that I normally would worry about, I just stopped worrying about it. Worrying actually takes a lot of energy and when you’re exhausted, you just don’t have the ability to do it. So I gave up worrying. (Thanks son!)
I am just over the hump now into my second trimester and already and nausea and dizziness are subsiding and my energy is returning. I am looking forward to seeing what this next phase of my pregnancy has to teach me.