So, I have entered into the second trimester of pregnancy and am patting myself on the back for getting through the first while working. I’m sure everyone has their pregnancy ups and downs, their tough symptoms, etc, etc. My hope is not to turn these posts into a bunch of pregnancy complaints. Instead, I just hope to share my discoveries as a pregnant music therapist.

(I like this picture because you can see Baby’s hands!)

Here are some of the random but not-so-random experiences I encountered during the first trimester:

• It’s really hard to keep a secret! My husband and I wanted to wait until the end of the first trimester before we went public. Well, public at work and on Facebook. We did tell our families and a few trustworthy friends when everything was confirmed. But, it’s tricky to be at work and feeling tired and nauseous knowing that you can’t tell people that you feel that way or why.
• It’s difficult to sing to people when you want to throw up. My work day starts in the NICU where I do the Multimodal Stimulation treatment with our little patients. It involves holding babies, singing high-pitched lullabies and touching them. It’s one of my favorite parts of the day and I HAVE to see these patients first for infection control reasons. I found singing first thing in the morning like this to be tough because this was when my nauseousness was at it’s worse. Luckily I didn’t really vomit much, so I was confident that my nauseous feelings wouldn’t follow through to that level while I was in the NICU. But, it was still a tough way to start the day.
• Giving up coffee isn’t that bad, but not having it for a 2pm perk up is tough. I’ve been told you can have 2 cups of coffee per day when pregnant. But, the bigger concern is that coffee is a diuretic and suppresses your appetite. Pregnant ladies can be more prone to dehydration and obviously you want to keep eating. So I decided to just stop drinking coffee altogether. Coffee is what wakes me up, so it was tough to no longer have my only coping mechanism for tiredness. Not having it for the afternoon slump was tough too. But, I just ate a snack and drank more water instead and that seemed to work ok.
• I was always really tired. I mean, REALLY tired. That’s something you are told to expect but this is a level of tiredness that I have never expected or experienced. I found out that part of my fatigue was because my prenatal vitamins didn’t include enough Iron. I started taking Iron supplements and that helped a lot (well, I was still tired, but it still helped a lot). So, I learned that even if you are feeling something that people say is ‘normal’ don’t be afraid to tell your doctor, because it really might not be normal. But, I would pretty much go to work, come home, eat dinner (thanks for cooking babe!) and go to bed. Every. Day.
• I was always excited. I would often catch myself smiling and thinking about how great it is to be pregnant. At the very, very beginning when I was working with babies I would just look at them and think about how I was going to be having one too and I would even get a little weepy because it’s all just so great!

That’s what I have found out so far with that early stuff. I’m very happy to report that I am not as nauseous as before. Still tired, but things are a little better with that (I’m not sure if my fatigue is less or if I’m just used to it by now.) I’m looking forward to our next doctor’s appointment (which is next month!). We should be finding out the sex of the baby.

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