Amy's Abode

Welcome back! Today's post will be going over my experience with the first trimester of pregnancy, including all of my symptoms (and how I managed them) as well as the different appointments and testing that occurred concerning my pregnancy.

In the grand scheme of things I didn't have many symptoms and most of the ones I had were pretty mild. I consider myself very lucky that my morning sickness was more of a constant underlying nausea that went away in the evening and overnight, and there were solutions in place due to my working from home to help manage it all. I never once threw up, even with an incredibly sensitive nose that led me to gag several times. My nausea improved when I laid down on my left side, which meant I was working on my laptop in bed and would only sit at my desk for meetings to appear somewhat professional.

My big appetite also helped with the nausea. I ended up having to alter my meal plan to increase calories because I felt like I was starving all the time. It didn't help that for the first few months I couldn't stand eggs, which had been one of the biggest elements of my meal plan. Oops. I was also very thirsty and nearly doubled my regular water intake (which was pretty bad to begin with). I had mild cramping when being active at all which resulted in my sitting a lot. The worst symptom was feeling extremely tired at all times. I had to take a nap every single day the moment I was done work (an hour before my husband) and have him wake me up when he was done for the day. On weekends I napped pretty much half of the day and some days during the work week I'd take a nap during my lunch break.

The very first test I had done after finding out I was pregnant was exactly one week after I confirmed it. At the time, by my calculations, I would've been exactly four weeks pregnant. I went into my local LifeLabs for a free blood draw to test my HCG, which would confirm pregnancy as well as how far along I was. A few days later I got the email that my levels were consistent with four weeks of pregnancy.

Leading up to the HCG blood draw as well as the week after, I took pregnancy tests daily at first, and then every few days, to confirm that my HCG levels were rising. I did this because if the line started becoming more and more faint it would indicate a chemical pregnancy. This gave me peace of mind that I was pregnant and so far things were going well. I stopped doing this test at the six-week mark.

I did have regular bloodwork done for myself ordered by my midwife to ensure I was healthy and to test for any potential deficiencies. I have always been low in Vitamin D as well as Iron, however, due to my diligence in taking my vitamins and my diet, my levels were very normal and according to my midwife impressive for a pregnant person. We did, however, discover that I have a mild blood disorder and my husband had to get tested for it. Thankfully he doesn't also have it, which means it was highly unlikely that my baby would be affected at all. If he did have the same disorder, I would simply have to take draws more often and it would go on the baby's file so it could be tested for after the birth.

The eftS bloodwork focuses on general genetic disorders with about 70% accuracy. This bloodwork is free in Ontario so I had it done along with the accompanying ultrasound which we'll cover below, even though I knew I would be doing the NIPT bloodwork which is much more accurate.

The NIPT bloodwork was an interesting experience. NIPT is the most accurate screening test for genetic disorders, focusing on aneuploidies, which are instances of one or more extra or missing chromosomes (For example, down syndrome, trisomy 13 and trisomy 18), as well as sex chromosome aneuploidies. There is a 99.9% accuracy so while it's never 100% confirmation (unlike an amniocentesis, which is very much invasive), it's pretty darn accurate. This is also the only bloodwork test that will determine the sex of the baby, much earlier on than the anatomy scan at 20 weeks. This test was done at 11 weeks pregnant but can be done earlier. This test is also quite pricey (anywhere between $200–$1000). A nurse was sent to my house to collect my blood and then she sent it off to the lab (which is in New York for the company we used, Invitae). About five days later I had the results, which were sent to my midwife. We indicated that we wanted to know the sex of the baby. They hide it so that you don't spoil the surprise upon opening the documents right away. My midwife called me with the results, which I wanted right away for the disorder portion. Thankfully everything was negative so I could relax knowing all was well. I told my midwife I wanted to wait for my husband to be available to find out the sex of the baby so she forwarded the documents to me and told me which page we would find it on. A few hours later my husband finished a meeting and I set up my phone to film our reactions to finding out that we were having a girl!