A Better First Trimester

After my harrowing 58-hour labor, one of my first thoughts was, “I could do that better.” I could do the whole thing better, I think: pregnancy, childbirth, all more competent next time around.

This is what I relate to my friend when I get pregnant again ten months after birthing my first child.

“Congrats,” she leads, happy but askance. (She’s got her own six-month old. Pregnancy is still too fresh for her.) “But are you trying to get an A in ‘Baby’?”

She’s trying to tell me that there is no medal, no A to be had — you just have your choices, and the baby you grow. But I want an A unironically. Since I’m retaking the “course” right away, I’ll barely have to study! This time, it’ll be different — starting with the first trimester. Based on my prior experience, the pure enduring awfulness of this phase is worse than childbirth.

It starts hopeful. Well into my ninth week, I’m self-congratulating, sometimes aloud.

“Look, Robert, I’m eating things!” I tell my husband.

He nods. The relief is real.

“Look, I’m functional!” Last time around, I could barely make it to the park a few blocks away. He’d often come home to find me wan and tearful on the couch, refusing all food and activity.

I would wake early and nauseous, laying in bed fatigued until I was also ravenous. This set the tone for the day: not sure how to care for the competing clamors of my body’s needs, I’d somehow fail at all of them. I kept sleeves of rice cakes by the bed; Robert kept bringing a mixing bowl upstairs in case of puke. But all I could manage was books and TikTok. I succumbed helplessly to the great fecund unknown.

This time, I don’t have room for self-pity. When my existing baby wakes, I have to take him to the potty right away or I’ll miss his morning pee. Then, he wants a predawn breakfast, so I have one too. By 6:15 AM I’m up, with a first meal complete.

This rigor, it transpires, helps a lot. Most days, we end up walking the 90 minutes to Robert’s work so our family can have one of the good hours together; young children and pregnant people are not at their bests in the evening.

In the predawn hour, we watch the bakery load the delivery bike, the florist set out bouquets. The sky turns pink as we pass the churchyard. Sometimes, we’ll stop at the German bakery: sweet rolls for us, a croissant for the little one.

At Farringdon station, Robert passes the baby to me. We kiss goodbye, and I swim upstream against commuters in business casual: home on the eight o’clock train. Every pregnancy is different, but this experience is much improved. I have to assume my behavior is causal.

This first trimester is not the two-month nightmare of two springs ago, but it’s no easy ride, either. The most obvious issue is exhaustion. My little one’s naptime has been precious time alone, but now my body demands sleep. I cuddle him on the floor and close my eyes, waking still groggy when he sits up, bright-eyed, two hours later.

Less obsessed than last time with the changing shape of my body, I notice other things. My range shrinks; the morning walks cease. Grocery shopping begins to feel impossible.

My writing stops — not writer’s block (I’m still jotting scenes) but a lack of will to finish the job: my blog posts gatepost neatly around the first three months of pregnancy. Even awake, my mind is foggy. With no energy past caregiving, I lose my sense of time and self.

It’s not all bad. I’d gotten used to my postpartum hair loss: handfuls escaping every time I washed it. Then, one shower, so little fell out that I wondered if I had washed it properly (brain fog?) — before it occurred to me that my hormones were shifting again.

Any one-year-old is constantly changing, but I think mine’s reacting to my body changes, too. “He’s been really clingy lately,” I relate to a fellow mom, and we wonder together if it’s anything to do with pregnancy oxytocin passed through the milk.

When I do see my belly grow, it’s not amazement but recognition I feel: here again, already? I switch to wearing Robert’s clothes.

Robert and I both refer at times to “The Mother,” who is both me and not-me. She is the mythic creature seen through my one-year-old’s eyes, and whatever dissociated miracle in my body knows how to grow a life. The Mother is whatever makes the little one’s sleeping body follow mine across the mattress, cuddling unconsciously to my nearest part.

“You have to be kind to The Mother,” Robert explains to our toddler, having removed him from my face. Unfortunately, awake, my child expresses love with face-whacking, eye gouging, and hammering with objects. I block and roll.

The Mother is tired. Three PM hits, and I can’t believe there are three more hours until Robert gets home.

I scrape semi-conscious through the time, letting my child lead me by the finger, even though stairs already make me puff with effort. The joke’s on me: I get a text at five forty-five that he hasn’t left the office yet.

I’m exhausted, too tired to put the dinner I’ve made into a bowl and eat it. I’m nauseous, probably from hunger. I know that if I don’t eat by six-thirty, I probably won’t manage it at all.

One symptom I get is nightmares: vivid, emphatic ones. I wake suddenly with the dream so fresh in my mind that I churn it automatically into long-term memory. I discover that my bladder is bursting, I’m tightly surrounded by my cosleeping family’s forms, and I’m paranoid to leave the safety of the coverlet.

Reminding myself severely that I am a grown woman, I force myself down the two flights of stairs to the bathroom. I sing quietly for courage, and scamper back up with assiduous forward-facing attendance. I don’t turn or think too hard about the string-pull light’s ominous swinging shadow: that way lies madness.

But also, I have been hallucinating. Several times, I’ve been startled to almost step on a cat that rises and runs away. There is no cat in this house.

I slow-blink and wrap maturity over my shoulders like a cape. It’s not quite heavy enough to still the horripilation at the back of my neck.

Three AM is a hungry hour. I wake ravenous, aware that if I rise, I’ll wake the baby. Aware also that if I fail to eat, I’ll have a hunger migraine come morning.

I slink downstairs for pickles, pasta. My little one’s wails fade short of crescendo under my husband’s competent care; I hunch over the counter. Sated, I trudge back upstairs armed with a mixing bowl in case I puke it back up.

Just when I think I’ve almost made it, the eleventh week hits like a truck. I’m so exhausted I can barely move, but I have sole charge of an active one year old.

He doesn’t understand at all — or even notice, mostly. He crawls or toddles around, breaking into cabinets, clutching his new babydoll. When hungry, he scrapes at my chest in expectation of a milk harvest.

Suddenly, he whacks the bones around my eye so hard I break down. Nausea builds and I rush down two flights of stairs to puke and sob over the toilet bowl, listening to his confused distress above.

When I do soothe him — a water cracker for him, a handful for me, a dance from his crocheted cow toy — his smile is the sunshine not present in the sky. I lay catatonic while my son crushes crackers into the bed.

And yet, this is still a better first trimester. I pack snacks for the baby in daytime, and I eat them while we’re out. Less afraid of harming the fetus, I lift dumbbells in the upstairs room. I do the physio I already know for the joint aches I had last time, which keeps them barely at bay.

I get outside. I talk to people. Some of the time, I feel fine.

Every pregnancy is different, but it helps to have done this before. I know that my body can take this, can recover. And I know what the process earns.

My one-year old-is learning to sleep through the night, and I’m awake — but it’s peaceful, if not restful. I gaze at my sleeping husband’s face, and that of the child we created.

The little one is joy, pure innocent chaos, the word “wow” repeated at each new thing he sees. In a life full of marvelous adventures, this is by far the best thing I have ever done.

Pregnancy is awful, but its outcome fills me with wonder. I’m making my baby a sibling, and starting the miracle again.

Previous: Leaving the Village | Next: Feeding the Baby: A Weaning Story

Leaving the Village

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Jan 23

“Do you see how many adults are actively sharing childcare right now?” I ask my sister, watching my baby crawl across the floor toward the cat food.

Feeding the Baby: A Weaning Story

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Apr 6

When I first heard “weaning” as a term for the introduction of solid foods, I was confused. Doesn’t “weaning” mean the process of detaching a baby from its mother’s milk?