One day, my husband came home from work and looked surprised when he saw my bump.
“Oh!” he said casually, “I’d forgotten you were pregnant!”
I looked down at the bulging mass I once called a stomach and imagined how he could possibly have forgotten such a huge thing.
It must be so easy to be the non-pregnant partner. Life continues pretty much as normal, aside from the odd 11pm dash to the supermarket for mint chocolate chip ice-cream.
He’s not the one who has to worry about stretch marks, taking time off work or… gee, I don’t know, pushing a person out of her vagina.
During the first trimester, while the pregnancy is new and still feels almost mythical, you might forgive your partner for occasionally letting the pregnancy slip his mind.
You won’t make any such allowances during the third trimester. That’s when you’re the size of an elephant – with a temper to match.
Meanwhile, on planet You, the pregnancy will be at the forefront of your mind.
10 Ways You Know You’re In Your First Trimester
After all, how could you possibly forget the baby when it’s growing inside you? There might not be much to see just yet, but the pregnancy has already taken over your entire body.
In fact, at times you might even wonder whether it’s even your body any more. Everything feels so damn different now.
Here are 10 unforgettable ways you know you’re in your first trimester:
#1: You Feel Like Mrs Doubtfire
Your breasts are so hot they feel like they’re on fire. You keep double checking they haven’t been set alight, like in that famous scene from Mrs Doubtfire.
Your boobs seem to be celebrating the pregnancy with a constant eruption of red hot fireworks in your nipples.
#2: You’ve Got Dried Food Stuck To Your Face
Every evening is spent exhaustingly trying to remove all the dried food from your chin. You have a full beard made from your dinner – an occupational hazard of being so tired you keep falling asleep in your plate.
Your nightly facial now consists of peeling dried baked beans from your face and hoping your partner didn’t notice the imprint of your face in the mashed potato, where you flopped face down in utter exhaustion.
#3: You Decide What To Eat Based On How Gross It Is To Throw Up
Thanks to those pesky pregnancy hormones, there’s a good chance the food you eat will reappear a few moments later.
Far from opting for the most nutritious foods, you spend your time ranking your favourite foods in order of which you’d least like to throw up.
Potatoes are a no-go. They create too much splashback when they hit the toilet water.
Soup is ok, as long as it isn’t tomato, because that leaves an acidic vomit smell of death in your mouth.
#4: Your Fitbit Keeps Congratulating Your Bladder
Remember those days of going for walks, in a desperate attempt to hit your 10,000 step goal before bedtime? They’re long gone.
These days, your Fitbit gives you fireworks before lunchtime because you spend so much time running to the bathroom to pee. And vomit. And pee again.
There’s no such thing as taking it easy when your bladder is being squished by a ballooning uterus.
#5: You Shout Or Cry Pretty Much Constantly
Although you spend about 80% of your day in tears, you have no idea whether you feel angry, upset or happy.
You go from ecstatic one minute to enraged the next and, most scarily of all, you have no idea why. You’re a human-shaped hormonal explosion, just waiting to go off.
On an average day, you will cry three times before you even get to work.
Once, because your jeans are too tight. Again, because you can’t find anything you want for breakfast. Then, because the bus is full, and nobody offers you a seat. And that’s because, despite the tears streaming down your breakfast-encrusted face, you don’t look pregnant yet.
#6: You Have The Sex Life Of A Newlywed
Pregnancy seems to have turned you into a nymphomaniac. You’re ready and raring to go from the moment you wake up in the morning, right until you fall asleep in your bowl of chilli at the end of the day.
The only difference between this and newlywed sex is that you have a strict ‘no touching’ policy when it comes to your Mrs Doubtfires.
Oh, and you occasionally have to stop to pee. And vomit. And pee again. But that’s fine. It’s totally sexy.
#7: You Have The Nose Of A Visually Impaired Hunting Dog
Pregnancy has given you a superpower which, on second thoughts, might not be so super. You can sniff out rotten food, bad toilet smells and stale cigarette smoke in a three mile radius.
Your partner will spend all evening lovingly preparing a nutritious meal. Then you’ll turn round and refuse to eat it (or fall asleep in it) because it smells so bad.
You’re also very critical about morning breath in the first trimester. And any colleagues who smoke should prepare to face your wrath when they come back after their cigarette break.
#8: You Have The Social Life Of A Nun
Actually, you’re probably worse off than the average nun. You’re in bed by 7:30pm most nights and you keep missing out on cocktails with the girls because, erm, you can’t drink the cocktails and it would be a real giveaway when you suddenly opted for a Shirley Temple. Your Instagram feed is filled with filtered photos of your friends having fun while you’re busy sleeping.
#9: You Know You’d Be Rubbish As A Spy
Everybody thinks they’d make a good spy. It’s all those spy movies you watched with your dad on rainy Sunday afternoons when you were growing up. You always thought you’d be great at keeping secrets, foiling terrorist plots and pretending your pen wasn’t capable of shooting lasers.
In the first trimester of your first pregnancy, you realise for the first time you’d actually be rubbish as a spy. You don’t even have a laser weapon, and there are no terrorists to battle with. You just have to keep one secret and that’s already proving too much.
You live in a constant state of fear people are going to work it out and get the scoop on your pregnancy before you’re ready to share the news.
#10: You’re Worried About Everything
Everything. Like, every single thing. You’re terrified of soft cheese, and whether the bottle of wine you drank before you found out will cause any harm, and whether you should be lifting boxes.
Each time you pee, you inspect the contents of your knickers with the passion of a forensic crime scene investigator searching for fingerprints at a murder scene.
You start to enjoy the constant vomiting and the burning breasts and the bone-aching exhaustion, because you take these symptoms as proof everything is going ok.
But you still spend three hours a day Googling each and every thing you notice, because you are so worried about your pregnancy.
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