Each trimest is 13
weeks, so the first trimester is from not pregnant until you're 13 weeks.
The first trimester you're going to experience breast tenderness. And this is not everybody.
Everybody's pregnancy experience is different, but common things that you
can expect during the first trimester are breast tenderness, and nausea, and vomiting.
The first trimester appointments consists of a lot of blood work. All your prenatal labs are drawn,
vaginal cultures are done to make sure you don't have any infections,
a pap smear is done, if you haven't had one in the past year, and ultrasound is
done to confirm your pregnancy dates. We do the genetic testing in the first trimester.
So in the first trimester or the in the entire pregnancy, if you're not an exercise person, being
pregnant is not the time to start an exercise regimen. If exercise is a part of your regimen,
you can continue that in pregnancy, in the first trimester, providing the doctor doesn't say that
you can't. You should avoid heavily processed lunch meats, and there's a whole list of fish
that you should avoid. I can't think of them offhand, I always have to pull it up,
but there's a bunch of fish with high levels of mercury that you should avoid during pregnancy.
You should avoid um soft cheeses. I know it sounds weird, but not cream cheese,
I mean the bries and the fromage - those kind of cheeses.
If you're experiencing any vaginal bleeding, any at all,
even if it's just a little spot when you wipe, and if you're having so much nausea
and vomiting you can't keep anything down and you're starting to feel weak from it.
At the end of the first trimester, what has started to form is what's called the
neural tube, and that will develop into the brain and the spinal cord,
and then you start to develop ears and eyes at the end of the first trimester.
The risk of miscarriages is highest during the first trimester because
that's when the development occurs, and if the development doesn't occur correctly,
then it invariably leads to miscarriage.
Usually not until about 14 to 18 weeks when you begin to feel movement,
and that's the second trimester.
The second trimester is from about 13 to 13 and a half weeks until 26/27 weeks and
each trimester lasts 13, approximately 13 weeks.
The second trimester a lot of women feel great,
because the nausea and the vomiting resolves and they're not so heavy
that they're uncomfortable. So a lot of times the second trimester is when you feel great.
The second trimester is when you get an ultrasound to look at the complete
anatomy of the baby, and a lot of times I'll tell you the sex of the baby then.
And more testing - the testing spreads out in the second and third trimester,
but there's still things to test for, and the main one in the second trimester is diabetes.
A screening test to see if you're at risk for having diabetes associated with pregnancy.
Throughout the pregnancy, you should avoid aspirin, unless specifically told to take it
by your physician. Definitely no ibuprofen. That's Motrin, Pamprin, Advil at all during pregnancy.
If you sense a decrease in fetal movement. What I tell people is that the pregnancy, your baby,
is a person and the person should move in there every now and then. If your husband didn't move
for 12 hours you wouldn't wait 12 hours to tell somebody. So it's just keep in mind
that's a person, and they do people things. They sleep, they get the hiccups, they move around.
At the end of the second trimester everything is formed pretty well,
except the lungs are the last thing to form. The liver, the pancreas, the stomach. The end
of the second trimester you may even notice on the ultrasound the baby might suck his or her thumb.
It can sometimes. It can sometimes, especially if babies legs are crossed or baby's arms are
over it's lap, so to speak. I don't know about getting it can it get it
wrong? Absolutely. More likely it's just not to be able to tell you what it is at all.
Absolutely. You will feel the baby move, beginning at about 16 weeks you should
start feeling the baby move. In the beginning, it may be difficult to tell if that's the baby
moving or if it's your stomach growling, it's a little hard to tell. But as the pregnancy
progresses you'll definitely be able to tell a frank kick from just your stomach rumbling.
The third trimester is from 27 weeks until you deliver and again
it lasts about 13 weeks. The end of a pregnancy is considered at 40 weeks.
During the third trimester you can expect to become a little more uncomfortable because
you're pretty heavy in the front. You may experience back pain because human
beings are meant to stand up straight, but your center of gravity is off when you're pregnant,
so it tends to pull you forward, so your back muscles tend to tighten up to hold you upright.
So you may experience back pain and you may start to experience cramping in the third trimester.
The frequency of the appointments increase in the third trimester. So they go from about every four
weeks in the first trimester to every two to three weeks in the second, and then the third trimester
they go from every two weeks to once a week. And that those visits include a blood pressure check,
a urine dip, a weight, listening to the baby's heartbeat, that's through all the visits though.
During the third trimester you should avoid traveling too far from where you're going to
deliver. So I don't like my patients after about 28 to 32 weeks, I don't like for them to travel.
You should call the doctor in the third trimester again if you
perceive a decrease in fetal movement, if you're having a watery discharge,
so if you're concerned that your bag of water may have broken, vaginal bleeding.
At the end of the third trimester all the organs are formed,
and again the lungs are the last thing to form.
A term pregnancy is considered 37 weeks. So after 37 weeks and beyond is safe.
You should feel the baby move every hour.
Cramping in the third trimester is normal, but if you are before 37 weeks and that
cramping is associated with bleeding, or more than six episodes in an hour,
or increased vaginal discharge, you should go to the hospital.
Braxton Hicks are those early contractions, and again nobody knows why they happen.
Everybody doesn't get Braxton Hicks contractions,
and they vary in intensity and frequency from person to person.
So they're pretty much the nutrients that are necessary to sustain your life at whatever
stage of life that you're at. It's just that in pregnancy, you might need a little bit more
of them. And so certain minerals though that are important would be like iron and calcium, and then
the B vitamins are important. Specifically folate, or you might have heard it called folic acid,
that's important not only in pregnancy, but also prior to pregnancy would be important to
supplement with a folic acid supplement. Um vitamin D is an important nutrient, choline
is important in pregnancy, and you can find that in eggs. So any of these are usually in a little
bit higher amounts in a prenatal vitamin, so it's recommended that if you're planning conception,
you should probably try to start taking a prenatal vitamin about a month before you
conceive. For some women with histories of babies born with like neural tube defects,
they should probably start when about three months before they become pregnant.
So it's a pretty it's a pretty broad answer,
for a very broad question. But generally speaking in your pregnancy, the calorie needs
don't increase until the second and the third trimester. So the second trimester, you need
about 350 extra calories above your pre-pregnancy needs. In the third trimester, about 450 calories
more. And of course we want you to fill those extra calories with nutrient dense foods. So that
would be things that are likely in proteins, and nuts, and seeds, and whole grains, and things that
are going to give you lots of extra vitamins and minerals to support a healthy pregnancy.
So the idea is, so those are kind of two different
answers. So the dates, a lot of people think that they're going to um, they're going to cause
contractions. A lot of people will will actually eat them in the third trimester to try to induce
labor. Um there's really no strong evidence about how they do that, one way or the other. Um so it's
actually safe to eat dates in pregnancy, um and they actually are full of fiber, they're a whole
food source of carbohydrates, and so they might be a nice substitute for maybe sugary sweets
that you're craving actually. So again no evidence against dates, it's kind of a myth. As far as the
soft cheeses, and soft cooked eggs, and the deli meats - those recommendations are for a different
reason. So those recommendations are so that you can avoid foodborne illness that might be in those
foods. So those foodborne illnesses, if someone that's not pregnant gets the foodborne illness,
um you know they get sick, they get better life goes on, but for a pregnant woman if they get
that foodborne illness, it can negatively affect the fetus as well. So usually that's why we say
stay away from the unpasteurized dairy, soft cheeses, undercooked meat, undercooked eggs,
and the lunch meat.