Early Pregnancy: Exhaustion

Written 3/3/2015

It figures that the week the fatigue really hit me was also the week we had a house guest. And a house guest that we weren't entirely prepared to tell about the pregnancy at that.

The exhaustion began last weekend. I got over 10 hours of sleep on Friday night and close to 10 more on Saturday night. But I was still dragging all day on Sunday and ended up taking a mid-afternoon nap. I'm not prone to naps, and I was worried that it would make it hard for me to get to sleep that night. It turns out that it didn't impact my sleep at all.

Thus began a week when I was sleeping more than usual, close to nine hours a night. But I was having a hard time waking up in the morning, and I was dragging my butt through work. I'd almost managed to kick my caffeine habit completely at this point. I was down to a single cup of green tea a day. With my new found exhaustion, I was right back to my pre-pregnancy caffeine intake. At least I never really drank that much caffeine to begin with, preferring tea to coffee.

I did my best to pass this off as somewhat normal to my cousin. But between the early bedtimes, my refusal to drink any alcohol at all (she even bought a special bottle of wine as a thank you for letting her stay; I felt really bad when I didn't drink any), and constantly running to the bathroom, I'm surprised she didn't say anything about me being pregnant. Connor eventually did at his birthday dinner, but he accepted that I was on a diet. Somehow.

After a week of this, I was starting to wonder if it might be worth taking a sick day, just to stay in bed and sleep. I was at least planning to get a lot of sleep in over the weekend. But then I miraculously woke up refreshed one morning. I even woke up a couple of minutes before my alarm clock, which had become pretty standard for me. It's a nice sign that I'm getting enough sleep and I was so glad to get back to this routine.

Of course, my sleep is probably going to be all over the place for the rest of the pregnancy. I'm sure there will be more bouts of exhaustion, and theoretically insomnia will kick in at some point in the second trimester. As pregnancy symptoms go it isn't terrible - at least I haven't puked yet - but it's been the most annoying one so far. I hate feeling tired all the time.