Pregnant: First Trimester

Before I deliver this baby, which could be any day now, I want to recap the journey of the last nine months. Mostly for my memory, but also to provide a tad bit of insight to people living in Doha who may be frantically searching for information on hospitals, like I was. I'll get to that in the following post.

Jake flipped it over and read it

Let's start back at the beginning of this year, 2016. Jake and I had talked about having our first child while living in Doha for a couple of reasons. Like many other people, we knew that it would mostly be paid for, that it was safe, and so many other expats here seem to think it is a pretty great place to have kids. On top of that, we knew we were approaching 30, and approaching our debt free date, which was our first priority in coming here. We had, and still have, no idea what the healthcare will be like wherever we end up next, so it seemed a pretty reasonable time to get started. Even though for years we've been wondering when we're going to actually want kids, ha ha. It seemed like a far more practical and logical decision than out of sheer desire. We love kids and typically choose to spend our time with any neices or nephews we can find, but we also love our lives and independence and current state (now- prior state). Anyway, we decided we didn't know what would happen anyway (how can you even know if it will work?!), and we were up for it, so I decided to go in for a check up.

That is when we were reminded of how little control we actually have over all of this. At a regular check up, I found out I had quite a big ovarian cyst. Big enough that they wanted to do surgery to remove it as soon as possible. That certainly wasn't what we were expecting! The doctors think it could have had something to do with the Mirena IUD I had in. After seeking out a couple of other opinions I scheduled the surgery and asked them to remove the IUD at the same time. The surgery went well and I wrote a separate post about that. But things got interesting a month later when there was another large cyst...

Positive! 

Before that though, I had been using an app that tracked my cycle but with the recent surgery and IUD removal, you can imagine why it was slightly off. We were hoping to avoid a Christmas day baby, but also had read that people who just recently got off long term birth control (like an IUD) take about three months longer to conceive than others. So anyway, we got pregnant immediately and will be having a Christmas baby! Ha ha...

Seemed like we should take a picture

Again, as much as we think we can control all of this, we really can't. Throughout the process I continually thought of all of the women who have tried to conceive for so long, or who tried not to and still did. It is a huge fear for many women, and I lived it with it for the majority of my life as well. I must say it felt strange being in a place where we were planning for a baby. I grew up thinking it mostly happened as an accident when you weren't ready...ha ha...no need to guess where that came. 

Just trying to see what our kid will look like ;)

On our trip to Cyprus I began to notice tiny symptoms, but most of them were also similar to starting your period so I tried not to read into it. I had this weird thing about not wanting to take a test until I knew. I wanted to know in my body, before relying on a test. So I waited...and Jake kept asking me day after day, "Why don't you just take a test?!" Finally, ha ha... I felt confident enough that I actually told him, while he was nervously wringing his hands before flipping the test over to check, "I'm definitely pregnant- it doesn't matter what the test says. I'm certain!" Jake finally grabbed it and flipped it over. "You're pregnant," he said. And that was that.

Fetus on the left. Huge cyst on the right.

Shortly thereafter we went to get a blood test to confirm it. The doctor wanted to do an ultrasound on top of the blood test. During that ultrasound, all I heard out of the technician was, "large cyst." I said, "Yep, I just had it removed!" Then quickly realized he was in fact, seeing another large cyst on the opposite ovary. That was unsettling. After a few trips to a different hospital and consulting with a couple of doctors, it was determined that although the cyst was large enough to warrant removal by surgery, they wouldn't touch it during the baby's first trimester. These types of cysts apparently shrink during pregnancies. We were pretty nervous for a number of weeks, mostly of the cyst rupturing. I was told no exercising, sex, etc. I was quite bummed about the exercising considering I had been pretty determined to get into good shape for the pregnancy. That was my first big struggle: rest, take it easy, don't overdo it. Not what I wanted to hear.

12 week appointment where baby was jumping around

It seemed this cyst uncertainty lasted for far too long at the time, but at 12 weeks I was lucky enough to go in for an ultrasound and discover the cyst had indeed shrunk. It was still there, but the doctor was not concerned. What a relief! This was the week we planned to begin telling people, as we were flying to the states a few days later. 

As far as how I felt physically, I felt quite lucky that nothing was too terrible in the first trimester. Yes, we were worried about the cyst and the uncertainty that is the first trimester (the miscarriage statistics are shocking!), and yes I was frustrated about not being able to stick to my work out regimen. But overall, I couldn't complain much, after hearing about the hell that is the first trimester for a number of women. I was tired, wanted a lot of carbs, and a bit sore up top, but past that, I generally felt pretty good. I am grateful for that, and for the health of baby Curtis those first 12-13 weeks.