Finding out your pregnant can bring on a variety of emotions—from excitement and joy to anxiety and fear. The journey of pregnancy is a wild ride. It’s weird to think that you’re already 1/3 of the way through your first trimester when you find out that you’re even pregnant!
First Trimester
The first trimester is considered to be the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Most women don’t even find out that they’re pregnant until week 4, or even later if you aren’t tracking your cycle. So by the time you find out you’re pregnant, 1/3 of the first trimester is already gone. The first trimester is typically plagued by nausea (morning sickness), fatigue, tender breasts, and food cravings (or aversions). Besides battling all of the new physical symptoms of pregnancy, your mind starts to race on all of the other things you need to do. First there’s booking the first doctor’s appointment (usually scheduled around week 8) and getting prenatal care set up for the pregnancy term (and starting prenatal vitamins if you haven’t already!). And then there’s the other changes to make to your lifestyle, such as no smoking and no alcohol, avoiding certain medications and foods. It’s a lot to adjust to!
If you’re like me and like to do research, I highly recommend the below books. While I think reading these books can be helpful, it is definitely not necessary—you can read all of the books before a baby comes, but nothing compares to learning hands on how to take care of a baby. However, I like reading and it gave me peace of mind reading the below books before baby came!
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- What to Expect Before You’re Expecting – This book gave a great background on how to plan for pregnancy, from conception to birth, with helpful tips and strategies for getting pregnant. I think this book helped put me in the right mindset going into TTC (trying to conceive) so I could know what to anticipate.
- What to Expect: Eating Well When You’re Expecting – While I didn’t consider myself to have a poor diet before getting pregnant, I knew that there was room for improvement with my diet. And now that I was expecting, I wanted to make sure that I was getting the proper nutrition to keep my baby healthy. This book covers all things about food during pregnancy, from which foods to limit/ cut out altogether to which vitamins/ minerals to ensure you’re getting while pregnant.
- What to Expect When You’re Expecting – The classic book that everyone hears about when pregnant. This book is the pregnancy bible and goes through everything you need to know about expecting a baby. It was a long read, but I definitely found all of the information within to be helpful and reading it made me (slightly) less nervous to have a baby.
Symptoms
My first trimester was surprisingly not as bad as it could have been. Thankfully, somehow, I did not get morning sickness; however, I did get some nausea. The symptom that hit me the most in the first trimester was definitely the fatigue. I remember feeling so exhausted throughout the day that it made it hard to work. I am fortunate to work from home, so I was able to lie down when I needed to.
Another symptom that I got early on was food aversions—I started to HATE raw nuts (almonds, cashews, etc.) around week 7 or 8. Funny enough, when I found out that I was pregnant I adjusted my diet a little bit to consider healthier snacks (such as nuts). We went to Costco one weekend and we bought a bag of almonds, a bag of cashews and a bag of pistachios. I ate the nuts daily for a week or two, until one day I couldn’t even look at them in our pantry without feeling nauseous. It was one of the weirdest feelings I’ve felt, as I’ve never been so averse to food before. I don’t recall any food cravings that I had—I really wanted to have some random gross food craving (like a pickle covered in cottage cheese), but that never kicked in for me.
Doctor's Appointments
As mentioned in my Road to Pregnancy blog post, the wait until the first doctor’s appointment at 8 weeks is excruciating. I am an impatient person, and it was so hard for me to wait those ~4 weeks between finding out I was pregnant and confirming it via ultrasound. But once the ultrasound wand was inserted and our little “blob” popped up on the machine, it was a miracle. We did have to confirm with the doctor that there was only one baby in there (as twins run in my husband’s family)—and thankfully there was only one. We left that appointment with full hearts and LOTS of information about what to expect on this pregnancy journey. We also got scheduled for our second appointment (at 12 weeks).
One thing that I found helpful for all of the prenatal doctors appointments was taking notes. I made a list of questions on my phone to ask my doctor during the appointment, and then I would copy over the questions and answers into a Word doc and save to my computer (so that I could reference later). It’s the Accounting Momma in me that likes to document and save information that I might need later on—heck it might come in handy if/ when we have baby #2.
The first trimester was definitely a whirlwind! I know that my husband and I were actively trying to get pregnant, so it wasn’t a complete surprise when we got that positive pregnancy test, but it was still a shock. There’s an adjustment period that you go through, learning how your life is going to change over the course of 9 months, as you shift from a family of two to a family of three.
Second Trimester
The second trimester is considered to be 14 weeks long (week 13 through week 26). This trimester is meant to be the easiest and most comfortable trimester for moms. However, for some moms, the symptoms from the first trimester carry into the second trimester. One exciting part of the second trimester is that you get to find out the sex of your baby (if you so choose). If you decide to do a “baby moon,” it’s recommended to do in this second trimester, as you should hopefully be feeling your best during this stage.
Symptoms
As mentioned previously, pregnancy symptoms should *hopefully* improve in the second trimester. For me, I continued to have no morning sickness (limited nausea) and I had less fatigue; however, the round ligament pain and leg cramps did start a bit. My bump started to appear in mid-January which was exciting to see!
Finding Out the Sex of the Baby
I know some people have split views on whether to find out the sex of their baby, but my husband and I couldn’t wait, especially me, as I am a planner. We (or I really) wanted to do a cupcake video to find out the sex of our baby. However, when we found out the results were in our inbox, we just scrolled right down to see, as we couldn’t wait any longer. We were able to find out the sex of our baby pretty early on in the second trimester as I did all of the blood work at my 12 week appointment. You can also find out the sex of the baby at the 20 week ultrasound, which is where they take every photo possible of your baby. It’s a lot of ultrasound photos for the baby book!
Note on the week 12 blood draw: be aware that they take a lot of blood, so if you are squeamish or don’t handle blood draws well, have someone with you (and also bring food/drink). I had almost passed out, as my vision blackened for a quick minute, until my husband came back to the blood draw station to help stabilize me.
Half-Baked Photo Shoot
One popular trend that was going on at the time I was pregnant was the “Half Baked Photoshoot”. The half baked maternity shoot is a fun mid-pregnancy photo session to celebrate making it half-way through the pregnancy. The term half baked is a playful nod to meals being half cooked, or the half baked ice cream (from Ben and Jerry’s).
I, being a lover of Ben and Jerry’s Half Baked ice cream, had to hop on this trend. I added a cute creative touch with pink and white balloons to signify that I was having a baby girl. I did the photoshoot in my kitchen, which is the most fitting location for a photoshoot themed around baking. I definitely utilized Pinterest to find the cutest photo opportunities (sitting down by the oven, sitting on the kitchen counter with spoon in mouth and ice cream in hand, etc.). One thing I wish I did was incorporate my husband a bit more. He was the one taking the photos of me, but I think it would have been adorable to have him in the photos, maybe with flour hands on my belly. Just some food for thought if you’re planning a half baked photoshoot.
Babymoon
One of my absolute favorite parts during my entire pregnancy was the baby moon. As you may have read in my Road to Pregnancy blog post, my husband and I did a lot travel before having a baby, so I was excited to plan yet another trip. Enter the Accounting Momma with, yes, another spreadsheet!
When
The most common time to have a baby moon is during the second trimester (weeks 13-26), as this is usually when moms feel at their best during pregnancy. For my pregnancy, that put me in the months of January, February and March. We decided to go on our baby moon in March as I was far enough along, but not yet in my third trimester. This timing also allowed for warmer weather. We opted for a 4 day trip (Wednesday – Sunday), which we felt was plenty of time to celebrate for our baby moon.
Where
January-March are not the warmest months for travel, so we had to plan strategically to find a warm enough location to visit during March. We had already ruled out anything international as we were hesitant to go somewhere that didn’t have our healthcare provider (god forbid if anything were to happen while we were on our trip and we didn’t have access to a healthcare provider). We also didn’t want to travel on a flight longer than a few hours, so we opted to stay within California. My husband and I have traveled all throughout California, but one of the few places we haven’t been together in California was Santa Barbara!
Activities
Santa Barbara has a lot to offer, from the history within the city itself to the Danish town of Solvang to the hills of Ojai Valley. We were not short of activities to do while on our baby moon. I wanted to get a prenatal massage during the baby moon so I made this a priority in determining where we would stay.
Ojai Valley Inn
One of the hidden gems in the Santa Barbara region, about 45 minutes east of Santa Barbara, is the Ojai Valley Inn. Ojai Valley Inn is basically a small town in and of itself. The resort is massive, spanning over 200 acres! And there’s so much to do, from honey tasting to soap making to stone painting, Ojai Valley Inn offers it all. In addition, Ojai Valley Inn has a renowned spa with a vast array of treatments, along with access to pools, saunas, quiet rooms, and more.
We stayed at Ojai Valley Inn for two nights and it was glorious. The room we had was right on the golf course, and we had a beautiful view of the sunrise. We spent one day at the spa getting pampered (was very much worth the price!). We got our exercise in by walking the property and checking out all of what Ojai has to offer. The restaurants at Ojai Valley Inn are also amazing – we enjoyed a delicious dinner at Olivella and a lovely breakfast at The Oak. Both restaurants I highlight recommend.
What’s crazy is that we barely scratched the surface of what there is to do at Ojai Valley Inn. They have so many activities (like golf, bike tours, guided hiking) that we didn’t have the time to take advantage of. My husband was hoping to hit a couple balls at the driving range, but we weren’t able to squeeze that in. Maybe next time, as we will definitely be back!
Hotel Californian
After two wonderful days at Ojai Valley Inn, we spent the remaining two days in Downtown Santa Barbara. We stayed at Hotel Californian, as we wanted to be close to the beach, and I admired the history of this hotel.
We arrived before we could check in, but we were able to go relax by the rooftop pool while we waited. Eventually, we were able to check into our room. We relaxed for a bit before walking down to the Santa Barbara pier which was lovely. Dinner on Friday night was at The Lark, and oh my god, the brown butter cornbread, OBSESSED! It was SO good that I made my husband take me back there the next day. Unfortunately, brown butter cornbread is not offered as part of their lunch menu, so we had to show up for their dinner menu (which we did as soon as they opened — since we already had other dinner plans…I NEEDED that cornbread).
The following day we went to Hook & Press Donuts, known for their unique donut flavors – and oh my gosh were they delicious! If you like donuts, you can’t go wrong getting Hook & Press while you’re in town. Right next door was a store called The Crafter’s Library, and since we had no plans, we decided to stroll through the store. Based on the name you can imagine the little knick knacks that this store had, including the Vintage Board Game collection. My husband and I love board games, and we had never seen this collection (board games in vintage style books). We have also always wanted to start a collection of some sort – so thanks to this store, we now have a collection (it’s still small, but it has grown since our first purchase on our baby moon).
We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Santa Barbara, getting our steps in (until I decided I was too tired to walk around). As I mentioned above, we went back to The Lark around 4:00pm so I could get their brown butter cornbread (on their dinner menu), and it was just as delectable the second time as it was the first. I seriously cannot stress how amazing it was. If you like cornbread, you have to try it. By the time we left The Lark, it was quickly approaching our dinner reservation, but neither my husband nor I was hungry anymore. So we decided to go back to our hotel, Doordash California Pizza Kitchen (as I had a craving for basic macaroni and cheese at the time), and veg out in bed. It was honestly the best way to end our baby moon!
When we returned back from our baby moon, I was officially in my third trimester. Our baby moon was the best way to end the second trimester. I was excited to see what was in store for the third trimester — time was flying and baby girl was going to be here soon!