The First Trimester

The first 12 weeks…

The first trimester can be a particularly challenging time for many.

It’s fairly common practice to feel like you can’t tell anyone, in the first trimester of your pregnancy, that you are, indeed, pregnant. The seemingly interminable wait for the 12 week scan places and the worry and fear of pregnancy loss means that many want to keep their pregnancy private. Whilst some feel that, should they lose the baby they would want the support of their friends and family and therefore would like their pregnancy to be known. But why do we keep our pregnancies private? Is it our fear of loss and then having to tell people we are no longer pregnant perhaps. It could also be our worry that others don’t want to acknowledge or talk about pregnancy loss - especially if they themselves are pregnant.

Yet 1 in 3 pregnancies end in loss. It is an experience shared by many and yet it can feel so incredibly lonely if you have experienced loss or if you are worried about it. What if we were able to talk about loss in a different way? And allow our pregnancies and loss to be recognised no matter ‘how pregnant’ you are. You can’t be only a little bit pregnant, after all?

However you choose to talk about your pregnancy is absolutely up to you. It can be helpful to check in and see - are you holding back because you feel like you ‘should’? Or does it feel like something that is tender and needs the warm nurturing between you and this baby - and it doesn’t feel right to share at the moment, it would be too exposing to share?

For others the changes that happen in the first trimester can be difficult too. We may feel incredibly fatigued, nauseous. Our bodies may change shape and yet we don’t ‘look’ pregnant yet. Our emotions can be very up and down and the hormonal changes that our body goes through can feel very extreme.

Lots of advice out there also states that we ‘shouldn’t’ be moving our bodies for fear of causing pregnancy loss in the first trimester but this is outdated advice. You can move your body however you’ve been moving your body before in the first trimester - it’s a different thing if you don’t want to or if it simply doesn’t feel right in your body at this point in time however. For me I found that I steered very quickly away from vigorous vinyasa flows - but I was drawn very much to my weight lifting and swimming practices. This changed throughout my pregnancy however.

How can you support your body and mind as you move through the seasons of pregnancy? What is it that your body needs today?