The first trimester was a little tough for me given that we hadn’t announced our pregnancy yet. But, I did write you a blog posting at week 12 to let you know the 10 things I learned about being pregnant. Here they are:

1. Even if you’ve been on birth control for 16 years that makes you not menstruate, you can still get pregnant in a month of going off it. No need for a “buffer time”.

2. You can say and plan that you’re going to eat healthy when you get pregnant, but when you have constant nausea and starches and crappy foods are the only thing that make you feel better, that all goes out the window.

3. If you don’t eat frequently enough you’ll find yourself dry-heaving at a McDonald’s drive-thru waiting for your emergency dinner. And, it’ll take about 10 minutes after you’ve eaten for it to stop while your food works its way down to your stomach and into your blood stream.

4. The only thing to cure nausea is food and eating happens to be the last thing you want to do when you feel nauseous.

5. Don’t be surprised if you gain weight just trying to combat the nausea so you don’t feel miserable. But, be surprised when you don’t gain any weight after eating constantly for 12 weeks and question if maybe you could have been doing that pre-pregnancy with the same results.

6. You feel guilty for everything you do that might impact the baby – like riding a jet ski in the ocean or using massive amount of fingernail polish remover in an attempt to remove ink from plastic (don’t ask.)…even though your sane pre-pregnancy mind made you promise you wouldn’t be that person.

7. If you don’t have pregnancy fatigue, you could very well suffer from insomnia instead. Or either, depending on the night.

8. You need maternity pants just for the bloating and begin questioning if that bump is a baby or just gas.

9. Speaking of gas, you’ll wish you had a dog, because there’s a lot and you can’t control it…even at work when a coworker is sitting at your desk next to you while you explain a project.

10. Just when you’re fed up with being constantly miserable and wonder why people speak so highly of being pregnant, you’ll have your 12 week check-up and ultrasound and find your baby waving back at you. You’ll wonder when that blob from the first ultrasound formed a tiny human and no pregnancy discomforts matter anymore.