FIRST TRIMESTER SURVIVAL TIPS + REMEDIES | Making The 1st Trimester Easier

Hi everyone, my name is Megan. Welcome to my channel. Today I'm going to be talking about my first trimester survival tips. So I have been pregnant twice now. I'm actually in my second pregnancy. I'm 12 weeks along, so I'm to the second trimester now. So I have survived the first trimester twice. And I've learned quite a few tips along the way that really, really help make it more comfortable. Being pregnant is such a joyful time and it's so exciting, but it doesn't negate the fact that it's really kind of hard sometimes and it kind of sucks, especially in the first trimester. The nausea and exhaustion are really difficult, especially when you have other children. It makes it really hard to be productive at all when you feel like you're going to throw up all the time and you're trying to chase your baby around the house. So that's what I've been dealing with the past couple months. And so hopefully what I'm going to share today is helpful for you guys and let's get right into it. So one of the most important things to remember during this kind of difficult time is that you need to lower your expectations a lot. When you're not pregnant, you can get all the stuff done, all the things. You can keep the house clean, you can keep your baby fed and changed, you can make dinner and dessert and like keep up on all the stuff that you have to do. And then you get pregnant and suddenly nothing happens and it's really, really hard not to feel guilty about it. You just have to remember that it's a phase and it will pass and it's okay to not have a perfectly clean house for a while and to have things kind of fall by the wayside. I mean, as long as you're keeping your family alive, then that is a success. Also, don't be afraid to ask for help. I am one of those people who really likes to do things herself and I feel almost embarrassed when I have to ask for help and like I'm failing. I had my mom come and clean our house a couple weeks ago because it had just gotten to a whole new level of bad and I just couldn't do it and it was making me feel so guilty. I feel even more sick because I just felt so guilty about the house. So my mom came to clean which was super sweet of her, thank you mom, but I kind of felt guilty about it and I felt like I was failing as a wife and it was kind of hard for me. I don't give up control of things very easily like that but it really, really helped to have the house get a good cleaning and then actually after that because it had the initial cleaning, it was easy for me to keep up on it because it wasn't so bad that I didn't know where to start. So it is really okay to ask for help. People don't mind. Like when you think about it, if someone asked you for help, you'd be like, yeah, I would love to help you, but just for some reason when you're the one accepting help, it's a lot harder and you don't realize that people are doing this willingly. And then also listen to your body. If your body's telling you to just lay down and take a nap, just really do it. It's really important to get as much rest as you need and as much food as you need while you're pregnant. So just listen to what your body is telling you and do what it says. So now let's get into this a little deeper. First, we're going to talk about exhaustion because that is a big part of the first trimester and one of the most annoying parts too. So again, just rest as much as possible, take naps if it's possible, have someone come and watch your kids for an hour or so or even half an hour and just take a really short nap. I'm one of those people that it's actually really hard for me to fall asleep during the day. It just doesn't really happen the way I want it to. And then I feel really weird when I wake up. So I don't take naps very well, but sometimes I'll just lay down on the bed. I close my eyes and that really helps a lot too. One thing that helps as well with the exhaustion is coffee. And I know a lot of people are really against drinking coffee when they're pregnant. And of course, do whatever you're comfortable with and talk to your midwife or whoever you're using and do your research. But I am 100% confident in drinking coffee while I'm pregnant. That's just my personal opinion. I drank it through my pregnancy with Sophia and she is very healthy. And I drank it while I was breastfeeding and she never had issues sleeping through the night. It never seemed to affect her that much. So I'm all for drinking coffee while you're pregnant and breastfeeding. Now, when I'm in my second trimester and I'm feeling really sick and awful and things smell and taste bad, I don't do the coffee. It just makes me want to throw up. But my exhaustion got so bad near the end of my first trimester and I couldn't get out of bed and take care of my daughter. And I would actually make myself drink a cup of coffee in the morning. And it helps so much. It's shocking. When you go without it for a while and then you drink it again, it's crazy how much it helps. So if you're comfortable drinking coffee while you're pregnant, it helps so much. And don't be a night owl. That's really hard for me. I like sleeping, but it's hard for me to go to bed. I feel like I'm missing out on something. I want to watch my TV shows, but Netflix will still be there the next day. You can sit down with a cup of coffee while your baby's taking a nap and watch Netflix the next day. But when I'm pregnant, especially in the first trimester, I go to bed really early. Normally I go to bed no later than nine, which is pretty early for someone my age. But if you can give your body as much sleep as possible, it's really going to help with your overall energy levels. Light exercise can also help wake your body up. I really despise exercise. I'm not one of those people who can just sit or stand in front of the TV and do an actual exercise with weights and stuff. I just hate it so much. But walking is really great for pregnant ladies. Even if that's the only exercise you do your whole pregnancy, walking is amazing. As much as you can walk, obviously don't overdo it and make yourself exhausted. But if you can just walk around the block and then increase the distance a little bit every day, that's going to be really helpful for actually even making labor easier. And when you get to the end of your pregnancy, it's going to help a lot of things. It's going to make you more mobile. When you get to your third trimester, you're just massive, uncomfortable. Yeah. So if you can walk, it's really good. A lot of times when I'm in my first trimester, I just can't. But on the days where you're feeling a little bit better, it can really help. So now let's talk about nausea. The one thing that I found that helps the most with my nausea is just eating food, keeping myself constantly full. If I get hungry, I get really nauseated. And proteins and fats are really good for keeping your body full for longer and keeping away the nausea for longer. A lot of times those are kind of hard to eat while you're pregnant because it seems like meats and vegetables are the things that make me feel nauseated. So those are kind of the best things to eat for nausea. It keeps you full longer and keeps it away. But I make sure that every day I eat even just a couple bites of something as soon as I get out of bed in the morning. Because if I let myself go half an hour and I get hungry, it's really bad. And then it kind of is worse the whole rest of the day. Even after I get it under control, it just makes the whole rest of the day worse. And it's kind of important to eat as healthy as you can while you're pregnant, especially on breastfeeding. But in the first trimester, it is really hard to eat certain things. And so if the only thing you can eat is junk food, it's not the end of the world. You still have to eat food. You have to keep yourself sustained. It's going to help with the nausea a lot. So just eat what you can, as healthy as you can, but just get some food in you. It really helps to eat something sour. This pregnancy, my cousin actually gave me some Prego Pops. They're actually these little candies and they're really sour. And they really help with the nausea. I think it's just the sour. So something sour is good to keep right on hand. Also, drink enough water. If I get dehydrated, I get way more nauseated. And then it's really hard for me to catch back up on getting the nausea under control. So drink a lot of water. Just keeping yourself hydrated in general is going to help a lot. Also, keep in mind that just plain water can be kind of hard on your stomach. So if you can add a little bit of lemon to your water, that'll help with the nausea a little bit. And then also keep in mind that tea totally counts as your water intake. So I know peppermint and ginger tea can help a lot. Sometimes I'll make a quart of peppermint tea and that quart will count towards my water intake. And that really helps me get enough water down. You can also diffuse peppermint and ginger essential oils or just find a blend that smells really good to use. It's really hard sometimes to find things that smell good while you're pregnant. But if you find something that smells good and then diffuse it in your essential oil diffuser, and it'll help mask all the other smells in your house that you're sensitive to. If I diffuse peppermint essential oil in the diffuser in the room we're going to be in, it helps tremendously. You might also have to switch to unscented soaps for a little while because I find a lot of times that floral scents don't smell very good. So I make all my homemade soap bars and stuff. So I might just switch to an unscented bar or just I really like mints. Like minty smells when I'm pregnant. So wintergreen or peppermint bars I really like. Now let's move on to heartburn. Heartburn is horrible. And it's crazy because I didn't have with my first pregnancy with Sophia. And I've heard that it means that your baby has hair, which would be really exciting because Sophia was a baldy. She still is a baldy. And so it'd be really exciting if this next baby had a lot of hair. I'm hoping that's what that means. Hopefully it's worth it. But the heartburn can be really awful and actually really hard to make go away. The thing that I found that helps the most with getting it to go away is to just put a little bit of raw apple cider vinegar in the bottom of a cup and fill it up the rest of the way with water and then drink as much of that as you can. And it fixes it pretty fast, like within five, 10 minutes. So that's like the only remedy I've found that works at all. And now let's talk a little bit about bloating. When you're in your first trimester, you're going to be pretty bloated and it makes it look like you have a bigger bump than you actually do. And then when you get closer to your second trimester, it'll turn into an actual bump and your bloating will go down a little bit. But when your stomach's bloated, it can be feeling pretty uncomfortable. And so I found that if I wear just loose shirts, ones that don't like tightly hug my stomach, that really helps with just feeling a lot more comfortable. Most of the time when we're just at home by ourselves, which we are most of the time because I'm a stay at home mom, I just wear sweatpants and a really baggy shirt. I really really like wearing loose shirts around the house and he doesn't appreciate that I'm using it for laundry, but I really like wearing shirts. But especially with jeans, they can be really uncomfortable. So I highly recommend investing in some good maternity jeans, like the kind with the band that comes all the way up above your stomach. I was really stubborn with Sofia's pregnancy and I resisted buying them until almost the end of my pregnancy. And I really regretted it because they are so comfortable. I love them. And don't just get the cheapo ones. They're going to look really weird and you're going to feel unconfident when you wear them. I think these jeans were close to $50 or more each. If you're going to have several pregnancies, it's going to be worth it. If you don't want to invest in any jeans, one trick I learned with just my regular jeans is to take a rubber band and put it through the hole for the button on your jeans. And then you loop both ends around the button and it like holds your pants on without having to have them all the way closed. But regular jeans just do get really uncomfortable. So leggings are really nice if you can just find some stretchy leggings. They don't have to be maternity, but I did find some really nice ones from Motherhood Maternity again that come all the way up over my belly. And they're really long leggings that I really loved with Sofia's pregnancy. They're still a little bit big for me right now, but I'm looking forward to wearing them with just like a long, loose shirt and my leggings. And that's like my go-to pregnancy outfit. You'll just have to play around with it and see what clothes are comfortable for you while you're pregnant. So I think that's most of the tips that I have. I really hope this was helpful for some of you guys. And this can be a really challenging time in our lives. And it's just really nice to have other ladies who've been through it before who can share what they've learned. And I hope to continue to do more pregnancy videos like this now that I'm pregnant again. So I hope you enjoyed and I will see you guys in my next video. Bye!