1st Tri: Constipation

Never in my life have I ever been more constipated than my first trimester. I didn’t actually know I was constipated until I visited my doctor. Sounds silly right? Like obviously you would know if you were!

Warning: If pregnancy is a trigger or a sensitive subject for you, please stop reading now. I will continue to share my experiences throughout my Pregnancy Blog Series and encourage you to turn to my other non-pregnancy related posts for your reading pleasure.

Another warning: If poop grosses you out, stop reading. But you should’ve gotten the hint once you saw the title and picture of this post (haha).

The reason why I thought I wasn’t, was because I was still pooping everyday. They were low-key a struggle (some times more than others), but I was still making regular daily bowel movements. So I thought, “As long as I was pooping everyday, I’m probably not constipated.”

WRONG.

I started getting severe cramps (around 5 weeks of pregnancy) that were so incredibly painful, I would curl up in a ball on the floor and just cry. I said to myself, “Okay, this can’t be normal.” I’ve dealt with cramps, but this was on a whole other level.

After messaging my doctor, she had me come in so she could do an ultrasound to take a peek at the embryo and my bowels. The embryo looked normal, but she panned over to my bowels and said something along the lines of, “Wow! You are severely backed up.”

Apparently pregnancy constipation is a very real thing. I had no idea! The changing hormones causes the bowels to function much more slooooowly and food can hang out in the digestive tract for longer than usual. AKA constipation, bloating, gas, and cramping pain. Greaaaaat.

My Remedy:

First things first, my doctor recommended 2 different types of laxatives to take until I emptied out. I felt (big) relief within 2 days. By the end of that week I felt completely emptied out and back to square one. My cramps were magically gone. I was so glad! Below are some other things I did to avoid constipation in the future.

Other things I did:
  • Water, water, water! I drank as much fluids as possible. Including hot lemon water, prune juice and apple juice
  • Stretch and went for daily walks to keep things moving. I had next to no energy in the 1st trimester, so this was all the exercise I could manage
  • Increased my fibre intake. I was eating all the fibre like; beans, lentils, avocados, bananas, apples, oats, cereals, almonds, etc. Anything with fibre, I was trying to eat as much of it as possible

Luckily all of these things combined really worked for me and I could not be more thrilled. Have you experienced pregnancy constipation? What are some things that have worked for you?

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In case some of you are interested in the book on my feature photo, you can shop it here! It’s not a pregnancy book, but it has some interesting info about poop.