Quarter 1
The first trimester ... I've been completely exhausted all this time. I was tired, I felt bad, I didn't have the energy to do anything and I didn't feel like doing anything. It was not an atypical pregnancy so far, on the contrary, it was a classic pregnancy (with nausea, fatigue, hunger), but coming against the background of a period in which I was extremely tired, not sleeping very well at night, and the day being quite busy with work and Patrick, I didn't get any rest at all, as I did in my first pregnancy. I didn't have much time to realize what was going on (while at Patrick's I was splitting any information into 7 and I was documenting myself excessively about absolutely anything to do with the pregnancy). In this second pregnancy, at almost 11 weeks, I installed a pregnancy tracking application, but since I installed it, I think I have entered it a maximum of 3 times. When I was pregnant with Patrick, I enter in the app's twice a day, the first thing I did in the morning was to read what happens to the baby, what size it is (whether it's apple, candy or dragonfly), what develops at that age, I monitored my weight and once a week I measured myself from head to toe. Now I haven't measured myself even once, and I think I took my weight only once, when I found out I was pregnant, the second pregnancy is really much more relaxed, no matter how cliché it sounds.
I think relaxation comes primarily from the fact that not everything is completely new and unknown. I know what tests I need to do, I know what I need to look for at checkups, I know where to go, what tests to do, I know the clinic very well and I know what discussions I need to have with the doctor who is monitoring my pregnancy. They are all familiar. And even if they may appear unknown, they are much easier to manage than they were at the first task, when they were all overwhelming and I could not cope.
The weight I started from was the same as the first pregnancy. So far, the process of gaining weight is the same, however, the discussions about the number of kilograms in pregnancy seem quite irrelevant to me, each body is different and I do not know if it is really important how much a woman gains during pregnancy. I, like the first pregnancy, will listen to my doctor, but I try and it seems that I succeed, to be more detached. I have seen that the transformations of the body are temporary, and that we are slowly recovering. Not overnight, but we'll be back. But what I can observe from the beginning of the pregnancy is that it is much easier to see that I am rounding, from the first trimester.
Our priorities (especially me) and our way of thinking have changed. I reconsidered everything I considered important to me before, but without forcing myself to do so. I just don't mind the fact that I put my job (or life in general) on hold, I didn't mind meeting friends I couldn't get to anymore, I didn't want parties or lost nights. Things were arranged in such a way that the change of life came as something natural, which I needed.
I think any couple gets into this when they find out they have a baby. Our lives have changed, yes. We no longer remember what it was like before, what we did, we like what we have become and the life we have. But I'm a little afraid of Patrick's reaction once the little one shows up and of course life with two kids is different from life with one, and I expect to have a hard time at first, but we hope for the best.
For the first 13 weeks I had a few checkups at the doctor, I also had a problem - on the back wall of the bag I had a decidual hematoma that took over more than half of the bag where the baby was, which is why I had to take Arefam until week 11 and until the end of pregnancy to take Aleract and No-spa, plus the classic pregnancy vitamins. At the 10-week check-up, that hematoma was no longer visible, but I still didn't feel fully happy, in fact the risk had dropped enormously for the pregnancy. It wasn't until I was 12 weeks old that I had the courage to fully rejoice that I was pregnant, but then I began to relax and realize that yes, it was happening. On November 2, I had the first morphology (of trimester 1), at 12 weeks and 3 days of pregnancy, in which it was confirmed to me that the baby is totally ok and that it is a boy. All the checks are done at the Femme Boutique Medical clinic, at doctor Ioana Dragan, as in the first pregnancy.
Regarding the tests, after you have confirmed that the baby is positioned correctly (intrauterine pregnancy) and his heart is heard, he gave me what tests to do: complete blood count, blood sugar, coagulogram, urea, creatinine, uric acid, TGO / TGP, VDRL / HIV1 / 2, Anti HCV, Ag HBS, TSH, free T4, T3, ATPO, urine summary, uroculture, Babes-Pap smear, vaginal secretion, culture and col. And I also took from the file of the first pregnancy: blood group and rh, IgG / IgM toxoplasma, rubella IgG / IgM antibodies, anti-Listeria antibodies, CMV IgG / IgM, anti-HSV I / II IgG / IgM antibodies.
Unlike the first pregnancy, this time I decided to do a genetic test, mainly because I wanted to make sure everything was fine. There are so many variants of genetic testing, it was a little overwhelming all this documentation. But in the end I decided to consult with the doctor and decided together to opt for VeraGene - it is a new generation non-invasive prenatal test (NIPT), developed in the laboratory that offers screening for trisomies 13, 18, 21, chromosome aneuploidies X, Y, microdeletions (DiGeorge, 1p36, Smith-Magenis, Wolf Hirschhorn) and identification of fetal risk for 100 monogenic diseases. It targets 2,000 mutations to detect 100 monogenic diseases.
To my surprise, the first trimester passed pretty quickly. I didn't feel great, I wasn't in the best shape, but it passed. And things are getting better, even if nausea and fatigue are still present. I will continue this journal with a new article, in which I will talk about the second trimester.
XOXO
Mom R.
Image: @Andrea Gligor
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