My first trimester - how did it go?

My symptoms and why they happen

Hello everyone,

I can’t believe I am writing this article. My baby is 15 weeks today, which means the first trimester is behind me.

Let’s start with the baby, and then we'll go to me and my symptoms. I was somehow in shock to find out that a baby grows all major organs in the first trimester - not fully, but they are there. We saw the baby at 10 and 12 weeks for the first time, and I couldn’t believe it already looked like a human.

Let’s see my physical and psychological symptoms.

My physical symptoms

I think I was pretty lucky when it comes to symptoms. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, but they did not debilitate me in any way. Some women have much worse experiences.

A lot of these symptoms are down to shifting hormones. Increases in hormones like HCG and estrogen, both produced shortly after conception and by the growing placenta, affect the brain in ways that give rise to some uncomfortable feelings.

Let’s go through them:

Nausea

I had 2 or 3 weeks in total where I didn’t quite feel like myself. I used to wake up with this feeling that I had something stuck in my throat. I vomited twice, and I did not want to eat anything. You feel nauseous, and then you feel hungry, but you don’t fancy eating anything. When you eat, you can have a small amount and then get nauseous if you eat too much.

Extreme hunger

I have never in my life experienced hunger like this. I was never someone who tolerated hunger (my suspicion is some genetic variations on my leptin genes), but it’s another level. It comes out of nowhere. It’s not progressive, it just happens within a minute, and there is a feeling that you MUST eat, and I was starting to feel nauseous. Nausea if I didn’t eat, nauseous if I overate. Rising levels of progesterone and estrogen drive an increase in appetite, signalling the need for more calories to nourish the growing fetus. I think it will only get worse from here.

Boobs