Pregnant Yogi: The First Trimester

The first of a brand new series for this blog. And the beginning of a brand new life.

Or should I say lives... the baby of course, and for me and my husband.

I'm writing this 18 weeks in to my pregnancy, so there will inevitably be an element of choice-recall here. But I have been blogging virtually every week for the duration across in "My Week in Yoga" series, so if you want to read it real-time (and read between the lines now you know the full story!), it is all there for you.

But here goes the hindsight summary as well...

Finding Out & The Early Weeks

Pure joy interspersed with not a lot else to be honest. I felt so well, so normal, in these early weeks that I couldn't believe I was pregnant and took waaaaay more tests over a few weeks than any sane person would do. Ha.

Symptoms Set In

4-6 weeks in, and the days of life being totally unchanged were already behind me.

I was tired. And not just 'I need a nap' tired, but deep-down-exhausted-to-my-bones, fall-asleep-on-the-sofa-at-every-opportunity, barely-keep-my-eyes-open tired. Which meant my practice became a function of when I had enough energy for it. Which was a pretty binary event. If I had the oomph, I practiced or took a class. If not, I didn't.

Intellectually, I would have thought this would have been harder to accept that it was. Losing my practice, my identity, my strength, my flexibility, all that. But in reality, I was just grateful this was the worst of it. I think I got off remarkably lightly on the symptom front and will forever count my luck: I had one awful day of "morning" sickness where I was both immobile and inconsolable, and that was enough to put the fear of god into me. I have no idea how you mums out there deal with long-term morning sickness. Seriously, you are heroes. My one awful day came and went, and after that as long as I never let myself get hungry, any queasiness was pretty manageable.

And Combined With End of Year Madness

That is until the year-end madness both at work, and the cold-and-flu season kicked in. Both hit me hard, and combined to take the fatigue and general feeling like I couldn't do anything apart from inhale carbs and lay on the sofa to new levels.

Especially when it came to the weekends and I would be trying to catch up on missed hours on my mat while still teaching my 90min Saturday class.

It was at this point that I had to take a step back and work out where my priorities lay.

Which ultimately shook out like this: my and the baby's health, my practice and my work, and lastly my teaching. While I love it, the regular commitment was turning out to be much more physically and emotionally draining while dealing with everything else that a first pregnancy throws at you. So I promised myself that I would set myself up to start teaching workshops and sadly say goodbye to my Saturday slot. Which I didn't quite manage in this time frame, but I did a few weeks into my second trimester.

And Then The Fog Starts To Lift

And just like that I hit the 12 week mark. Blood and scan results came in and all was well. All was (hopefully still is!) well with our baby boy.

Our baby boy.

I'm pleased I'm writing this with a few weeks distance as I was a little bit disappointed to find this out... not because I don't want a boy, but because I've always felt I would be a mother to sons. I have this vision of myself in my kitchen 30 years from now surrounded by giants of my own making - my husband is 6'3" and I'm 5'9"! Anyway, I guess I thought if we had a girl first then maybe I would sneak one in before that became true. Silly I know. But hey, we aren't always our best rational selves are we, especially when going about the business of growing an entire other human being! Anyway, now I couldn't be more excited about getting to raise this little man.

As the first trimester drew to a close, I could start to feel some of the fatigue lifting (yay!) and was looking forward to the so-called sweet spot the second trimester would bring.

Which I will tell you all about in the next couple of installments, firstly next week and then we will see whether there is enough to write about again before I hit the 27 week mark.

So watch this space!