The first trimester of pregnancy is like being underground for a period of months. Everything is slow, confusing, dreamlike: even dreams themselves are vivid and weird or, to be honest, completely filthy (hormones are weird and blood pooling in your pelvis does have some benefits).

The process requires you to use your imagination - you look similar on the outside but internally, you are building entire new bodily organs and systems. Limb buds, a beating heart, eyes and ears, a nervous system. In your body, blood gushes and increases its volume threefold; the hormone HCG doubles about every 96 hours after the first six weeks. By the end of your pregnancy, your womb will have increased in size by 500 times.

I feel awe and wonder and gratitude at the process of building a baby even if, during the first months of both my pregnancies, joy doesn’t poke through the layers very frequently - my body is too focused on dealing with physical symptoms to feel free and easy and happy. It feels sort of serious, and worth it, and lonely at times. Afraid of telling people about our pregnancies in case we have to un-tell them, we are mostly silent, experiencing the novel anxiety and strangeness in our own solitary bubble. I never feel like I have many words in these early months, which is uncomfortable in a social media landscape that requires us to constantly feel that we have something to say. If we can accept the necessary quiet and going inwards, it feels a little easier.

While baby-building takes place so does the process of becoming a mother for the first time or consequent times, a process of changing as a person. If the last metamorphosis taught me anything, it is how much of my “stuff” will come up in the next months and years, through pregnancy, birth and motherhood. So far this time around I’ve noticed how keen I was to have a “different” - i.e. better - experience of the first trimester. Last time I was sick and exhausted, anxious and miserable, and without realising it, this time I launched myself into PROJECT ENJOY YOUR FIRST TRIMESTER/MAKE SURE IT’S REALLY SPIRITUAL EVEN THOUGH YOU FEEL SHITTY AND THE HORMONES ARE MAKING YOU CRY WHEN YOU WATCH CBEEBIES.

Luckily I spotted what I was doing - my therapist gently pointed it out too - and in the last weeks I have been able to meet myself where I’m at with permission to feel, without the pressure of beating the first trimester at its own game, or always feeling grateful, or always feeling powerful. I suspect this will be a big theme for me both in birth and the fourth trimester too, both of which are periods the last time when my inner critic hammered me because I could have done better.

I’m sitting here listening to the pounding of my heart and reflecting that the more I think about motherhood, the more I listen to stories from others, the less certainties there are, and the more nuances. I started off thinking there was some holy grail to discover and tell women, a way to help frame it all, but really, everyone has their own truth. What does benefit us, I think, are spaces and questions that allow us to (re)discover for ourselves who we really are and what we really need.

I so wanted the answers, but I don’t have them all. Realising that there are no set answers is actually a relief. Stories matter, though. Within stories are nuggets that help us connect to each other, in our sameness or our differences, and they help elevate this “women’s work” to where it should be - the stuff of life and death, the moments that make and break us as humans on this earth.

So here are some of my stories about the first part of pregnancy. They are mine and though you might share elements of them, they give no indication as to what anyone else “should” be doing, and are certainly not calls to fix or change anything. They are just my truth.

A second healthy pregnancy is less discombobulating because, as my friend Sophie said, this time you have more of an idea or “WHO or WHAT you are building”. The existential terror of bringing a human into the world is lessened. Dealing with symptoms is in some ways more straightforward because you’ve done it before.
The bone-crushing tiredness of the first trimester never ceases to surprise me. It is how I imagine chronic fatigue to feel, or recovering from flu. I do precisely nothing and can barely open my eyes or get to the bathroom to do one of 17 wees for that night.
Nausea is the worst. Like any symptom, it requires a sort of strategic approach to management. Things like never letting my stomach get too empty or too full, not eating the same thing repetitively (something that I could get down one day makes me feel sick the next), being open minded to what will “work” but never forcing myself to eat anything that I don’t immediately feel is going down well. (If I do that, the memory of the sick-making thing literally haunts me for weeks.)
Symptoms ebb and flow, there are dreadful days and better days, or days with one unbearable half then a much improved half.
The medical establishment freaks out about “over-eating” because they don’t want women to get obese or develop gestational diabetes. They tell you on the one hand that you are likely to be starving but also that you don’t need to consume your extra 200 calories until the third trimester. So what, exactly, are starving, nauseous pregnant women supposed to do? Could they possibly eat intuitively, listening to their bodies’ requests without shame, and actually be encouraged to trust themselves? When food tastes good in pregnancy, it tastes really good. There are times I’ve nearly wept at eating beans and cheese on toast, or felt a genuine ecstasy at a silent trip to the kitchen at midnight, sitting on the floor eating ice cream from the tub. The idea that there would be a shameful voice in my ear telling me NO at this time feels like it’s going against a true listening to my body.
Rest is everything. In my first pregnancy I commuted and worked full-time in central London and stared at a screen for eight hours a day. I felt terrible until week twenty one and was bowled over by the suffering involved in the process. This pregnancy we were in lockdown, both at home a lot to share childcare; I was working only about 14 hours a week, either from home teaching via Zoom or short drives to short shifts as a postnatal doula (cuddling babies when you feel tired and ill is pretty good medicine for the soul). I could nap most days at some point and delegate lots to my husband, a great privilege but also something all women deserve. I noticed that if I needed to rest and couldn’t, the nausea got much worse. What rest and not overdoing it also allows is space to notice what works for you, what helps physically and emotionally, what picks you up and what makes you feel worse.
There is little mental health support at this time. It seems like, because the worst symptoms of pregnancy are temporary - for some “lucky” women 6 weeks, for most probably more like 2-3 months and for an unlucky few, the whole 9 months - there’s an assumption that it’s just something we have to get through. There’s practical advice out there to deal with symptoms, and much of the information is empathetic in tone, which is nice. But so often our hearts and spirits need tending to much more deeply, and starting off your pregnancy journey feeling supported is a powerful beginning that stands you in good stead for what’s to come.
Physical symptoms are connected to how held and balanced we feel. The physical is never totally objective - our experience of pleasure and pain is always changed by what’s going on within us and by exactly how we are supported. This time around I’ve had a weekly appointment with my therapist, which has balanced the hormonal madness and kept one thing at the forefront of my mind - all I need to do right now is look after myself and the baby growing inside me. Though technically I have other parenting, work and household responsibilities, the simplicity of prioritising this has been so helpful to me. It’s a mantra, from which other shoulds could fall away.
Something else that is easier this time but never easy: a letting go of expectations, surrendering to exactly what is possible and beneficial right now. My mind wants to launch online courses and teach more and collaborate with people on exciting projects, but my body already has an energy-sapping, important project of its own. I have to keep telling myself: the world will not pass you by. The work of pregnancy, birth and motherhood is frequently in being open to revelation, to what wants to present itself, instead of you always needing to be the puppet master in the story of your own life. If surrender is a type of listening to voices that are saying something, what is it that needs to be heard?

In my first pregnancy, I was finally able to find a sense of joy when I saw the rendering of my baby on a screen in the watery dark, when I saw her perfect spine, the tiny, arching bridge of her nose. Here lay the magic (I stroke that nose every day, and it is never not miraculous and perfect). This time I felt the same sense of wonder as I saw this small moving body and also a recognition I hadn’t had last time, of someone I have known since before (before what?) - there you are. Of course.

We can find pregnancy hard (and feel utterly grateful to be able to bear the children many women to give anything to bear) and hold the power of our creation stories at the same time - simultaneously holding our heads over the toilet bowl and building another person’s soft tissues from our own bodies. The ability to hold multiple truths is the best practice for motherhood, which is asks us to give permission to be both - exhausted and grateful, overwhelmed and fulfilled, craving time alone but needing the comfort of small bodies against our own.

We haven’t been taught that we can experience ambivalence without guilt, because everyone likes a simple story. But it’s really ok to feel all the things. Motherhood is all the things. Life is all the things. Isn’t it wonderful to be here for it?

The first trimester (round two)