When I found out I was pregnant it was late March, we had just come back from a quick trip home—Toronto. I was just getting over the lingering effects of covid but the nausea and fatigue (not to mention the cough) was something I just couldn’t shake.
My emotional response while staring at the home pregnancy test was very different than my at-home covid test—although the touch of anxiety was the same. I kept saying to myself “this is huge” and “noooo way.” After sharing the good news with my fiancé, the worry started to kick in. How will our friends and family take the news? Do they think we’re ready? What would I do about work? I’m not ready to be absent from my job for a year?…
The first trimester was brutal. You read about the symptoms online in nice clean text, written very matter-of-factly. However, to go through the never-ending nausea that crippled me for weeks. The weighted fatigue and the breast pain day by day while your brain plagued you with questions: Is this how I’ll feel for the remaining nine months? Did we try too soon? Am I ready to be a mother? How am I supposed to take care of a baby when I can’t even take care of myself?
After a month I landed my first big project a kitchen and living room renovation. I remember the morning of the consultation feeling ill and so exhausted. Getting dressed felt like the biggest chore I’d tackle for the day. By the time I left the house my bed was piled with clothes. Every pair of pants I tried made me feel more and more bloated. Every blouse felt like it highlighted (to me) an obvious growing bump in my torso. I tied my hair up because I couldn’t be bothered and did my makeup in a blur. I drove the twenty-minute drive sucking on Halls vitamin C, the only thing to combat the nausea. When I showed up to the meeting all my aches and pains magically dissipated. My brain shifting to “work mode” while I walked the spaced. For the remainder of the first trimester, I worked hard on that project. The urge to provide my clients with a beautiful space they longed to share with their family, fueled me, and when I went home, I allowed myself to fall apart. To let my body, feel what it wanted to feel and take what it wanted to take for the baby. It was a grueling three months. I worked through it and at sixteen weeks I was rewarded by hitting what’s called the “honeymoon phase” of my pregnancy; the second trimester.
Xo MJ
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