At this point, I’m well over halfway through this pregnancy, but with my first I really enjoyed keeping some notes from each trimester to look back on. It’s been especially fun and interesting this time because my experience has been so different from what I was familiar with from before. Here are a few thoughts on the first three months with this little boy:

Cravings:

• So much ginger ale (I was pretty nauseated right off the bat).

• Shirley temples with fancy cherries—not the bright red ones you get for sundaes.

• Veggie sandwiches, sometimes with every veggie in the fridge and sometimes just cucumber. I’d use hummus instead of mayo, slice the veggies super thin, and hit it with some lemon juice and top with spinach. So good.

• Hot white rice with cold raw veggies like cucumber, carrot, and cabbage; drizzled with yum yum sauce and some sriracha.

• Ramen noodles with chicken broth

• Panera cinnamon crunch bagels with so much cream cheese you have to eat it over the sink

• Any savory bagel, preferably everything, with the same obscene amount of cream cheese

Cravings Continued, or Weird Things I Wanted for Breakfast:

• Caesar salad

• Taco Bell

• Fried rice

• Egg rolls (Rob stopped at a Panda Express in the middle of Tennessee on our road trip at like 11 AM because I absolutely had to have one)

Aversions:

• Meat (especially chicken)

• Eggs (unless it came on a biscuit)

• Coffee around week 7, which is always sad. I usually switch to decaf for the first trimester but I end up not wanting coffee at all

Symptoms:

• I was very crampy the first few weeks. I remember this slightly from my first pregnancy but it can really throw you for a loop, especially after you’ve experienced a miscarriage.

• Felt like I was super bloated and started showing right away (a lot of this is because of my ab separation, which I never really managed to fix from my first pregnancy).

• Pretty extreme fatigue—I took a nap every day when Sophie went down from 1:00-3:00 PM and sometimes it went by so fast I felt like I had only just blinked. Rob would take some Fridays off and I would often fall asleep on the playroom couch at 9:30 AM.

• My boobs didn’t blow up right away like they did the first time, but around 6-7 weeks they definitely started hurting.

• Around week 7 I started feeling nauseated all day long, and by week 9 I was throwing up every morning (I threw up for the first time at our Airbnb in Oklahoma City, which is a weird detail I probably won’t ever forget). This was by far the biggest difference for me—my first pregnancy definitely came with some nausea but I very rarely actually threw up, and it was never so severe that I had to sit still with my eyes closed to try to combat it.

Exercise:

• I was going to CrossFit (we had class outdoors and spaced out so I felt comfortable with it as far as COVID safety goes) most mornings until we moved, which was around week 6. I definitely took it easy and used a training bar and was more focused on just moving my body regularly than crushing the workouts or lifting heavy.

• During our two week road trip across the country, I walked as much as I could with Ender.

• We ordered a Peleton which arrived in November and I was excited to use it but I was still so sick that I never rode it consistently until much later.

• Most mornings in our new house I would walk Ender a few miles, but after a while even that felt like too much movement and it would make me feel so queasy. I streamed a barre class around week 8 and had to stop in the middle to puke, so I decided to take a break from exercise for a while.

Feelings/Other Stuff:

• I got pregnant pretty easily after a miscarriage, which came with all kinds of emotions. It really didn’t feel real, and less than a week before we left California my doctor told me I could get blood work done twice to see if my pregnancy hormone levels were rising steadily, or I could wait a month and take another pregnancy test to confirm. I decided to skip the blood work because I thought it would make me too anxious, but I ended up taking a pregnancy test every week until we got to Charlotte. Seeing those two lines every weekend helped me accept that this was really happening, and that it was okay to be excited. (Even now at 23 weeks though, I still find myself holding my breath if I feel like he hasn’t kicked me enough lately. I don’t think we ever stop worrying, even after they are born.)

• Planning a cross-country move with a toddler and a dog (who went to a 6 week training before we left) during a pandemic while pregnant felt like a lot.

• When I was pregnant with Sophie, my skin was very inflamed around my chin and nose and I had a lot of acne; but this time my skin has stayed very normal. This was actually one of the things that made me wonder if we were having a boy this time. (Other than the relentless nausea, which I really only experienced for the first time with this pregnancy.)

• Rob’s company gave parents a very generous amount of COVID-related family leave and having him off work most Fridays was absolutely a life saver. I was nervous to be pregnant with a toddler at home and I really did need help throughout the day, especially when I wasn’t feeling well. Even without the days off, just having him working from home really made a big difference. I’m so glad that’s our new normal.

So that’s everything on the first trimester! I’ll be back in a few months with another post after the second. I always love hearing about people’s symptoms and cravings and general experiences, so I hope you enjoy it too.

I am also much more aware of how it feels to have lost a pregnancy than I was after my first, so sharing about this new healthy one after a miscarriage sometimes feels a little uncomfortable for me. If you are going through that right now, I hope you know that it’s okay to ignore the things that make you feel worse and just take care of yourself however you need to. I’m sending you all so much love, even and especially if this post is one that you need to skip.

One of my favorite snacks growing up were empanadas—my mom, aunt, and grandma used to make them and I didn’t really even realize they were a relatively labor-intensive traditional recipe until I was older and able to help make them. There are definitely short cuts you can take (like buying the tapas, or empanada wrappers pre-made), but if you have the time, it’s so fun to make them completely from scratch. My brother and mom came to visit for Thanksgiving and we made a bunch, and Sean put the leftover tapas in my freezer so I could easily make another round some other time.

You can fill these with whatever you like—ham and cheese would be great, you could do a veggie version, and one of these days I’m going to take a sharp turn away from more traditional flavors and make a batch of Buffalo chicken empanadas—but my all-time favorite are these classic beef empanadas. Many Argentinian recipes call for raisins, but we don’t always use them, so feel free to leave them out or throw some in however you prefer.

Ingredients:

For the dough:

• 3 cups of all purpose flour

• 1 egg yolk

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 stick of butter, grated or micro-planed

• 3/4 - 1 cup of milk

For the filling:

• 1 pound of ground beef

• Half of a white onion, finely chopped

• Half of a green bell pepper, finely chopped

• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

• About a tablespoon of olive oil

• Half a jar of green olives with pimentos, chopped (more or less or none of this depending on how much you love/hate olives)

• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese (Kraft is best for this—don’t use your fancy stuff)

• 5-6 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

Before baking: 2-3 tablespoons of milk for brushing onto pastry

Instructions:

1. To make the dough and wrappers, bring the flour, egg yolk, salt, butter, and milk together in a bowl. Mix together until combined. Roll it out onto a clean, smooth surface with a little bit of flour and cut into even circles (you can use a big cookie cutter or a bowl, depending on the size you want).

2. Make the filling by sautéing onion and bell pepper in olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook for 4-5 minutes, until garlic is fragrant and vegetables are softened. Add the ground beef and cook, stirring frequently to break down the beef into a thin, even mince. Add the olives, stir, and remove from heat.

3. Transfer the beef and veggie mixture to a large bowl and add the Parmesan and hard-boiled eggs. Stir well to combine and allow to cool slightly.

4. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

5. To assemble empanadas, put a tablespoon or two of the beef filling in the middle of the dough circle. Wet the edges with water and fold it over gently, using a fork or your fingers to seal the edge. Repeat on remaining tapas with the rest of the filling and transfer to a baking sheet. Lightly brush each empanada with milk and bake for 20-30 minutes, or until brown.

Well here we are, two weeks into 2021. I have a very short list of things for this first Friday Favorites of the year because, let’s be honest, there’s a lot going on in the world right now and I am having trouble focusing on much more than the pandemic, the attempted coup, and…actually I think that’s it.

• The very real, totally bizarre bucatini shortage of 2020. This was delightfully weird.

• I have been enjoying this podcast so much.

• Just ordered myself this cute ring—my wedding rings already don’t fit so I’m just going to treat myself to something a little looser for a few months.

• Ender got himself an influencer freebie and is excited to be trying out these CBD treats—his anxiety is so much better after training but we still need a little something to take the edge off some days (especially if we have people coming by to work on the house for any reason, which has happened a few times since we moved in). Use the code ENDER15 for 15% off your order, and let us know how your pup likes them!

• January 6, 2021 was a year ago, right?

• We had these Greek Chicken Bowls for dinner this week and I was reminded just how good they are—they may be one of my favorite recipes! I even took new photos because I was really having a moment.

Hope you are having a good Friday wherever you are! I’m off to a doctor’s appointment and to the store to get ingredients for a weekend of baking with Rob and Sophie.

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