My first trimester was honestly very difficult for me, from the moment I realized I was pregnant and through to my second trimester.

We had started trying to conceive but almost immediately paused because I went to a new physician for my annual physical and wanted to ask (again, after being dismissed about it by previous doctors) about getting my chicken pox vaccine. I have never had chicken pox, I knew I had gotten my last varicella vaccine more than 10 years ago, and I thought maybe bringing it up while talking about getting pregnant would get the conversation taken more seriously. It did! And I was able to immediately schedule a vaccine appointment. When I asked if I needed to wait longer to make sure I wasn’t pregnant, the doctor said probably not, so I went in later that week after a blood test confirmed I didn’t have the antibodies and would benefit from the booster, since babies can be at high risk when it comes to chicken pox.

Fast forward one more week, my husband and I celebrated our wedding anniversary. We went to a Korean-style spa where we enjoyed different hot tubs and saunas, and where I eyed the many signs reading “Please do not enter if there is any chance you are pregnant”. Seeing those after being asked a few times when I was receiving my vaccine was unnerving, as I had never in my life been asked this many times in a short period if I was pregnant, but these were unusual circumstances — I had been unable to get someone to listen to my request for a chicken pox vaccine for something like 6 years and this was my first time at a Korean spa in a really long time. We enjoyed a really nice time at the spa (minus the lingering wildfire smoke that meant I felt more comfortable wearing a mask even to enjoy the outdoor hot tubs…) and then went on to treat ourselves to a fancy omakase sushi dinner, another treat that we usually don’t enjoy. The very next day, I dyed my hair purple, a trying ordeal for me physically as I only had some toast before the nearly 7-hour appointment, found my neck straining under the weight of all the aluminum foil on my head, and got very hot from the foil tenting my face to trap all my humid breaths and maybe some fumes or at the very least the chemical smell.

That was Friday.
On Monday, I woke up feeling extremely nauseous, so nauseous I could barely bring myself to get out of bed. My husband urged me to try to vomit, maybe I had food poisoning (was it the sushi? was it the hair chemical fumes?) and I would feel better afterwards, but I was pretty adamant about not vomiting. I have never felt much relief after throwing up, and I almost always did so with such force that a bunch would go up my nose and I’d end up having to smell vomit for the rest of the day. But that day, I was feeling so desperately sick that I did end up dragging myself to the bathroom and trying to make myself vomit, to no success. It was really frustrating, and I tried all the tricks to trigger my gag reflex, which usually kicks in when I brush the back of my tongue or get too ambitious with a popsicle that I want to get off its stick. Nothing was coming up, and I was too nauseous to eat anything to put in my stomach to try again later.

I wound up spending all of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mostly lying in bed, doubled over from nausea, wondering how to make it go away, while a small voice at the back of my head started to say “remember all those signs you read asking if you were sure you’re not pregnant?? and you were sure you weren’t???” and my husband gently started asking me about my last period and if it usually came this late. (Sometimes…?) When he asked me this on Tuesday, I got quite frustrated because it would mean I had unknowingly endangered my unborn child by getting

1. a live vaccine
2. hot tub and sauna
3. sushi
4. exposure to hair dying chemicals

but by Wednesday, with how miserable I was feeling, I relented and asked him to bring home some pregnancy tests.

The first test came back positive so fast that I thought for sure I had done the test wrong. The instructions said to wait 30 seconds and the little plus showed up within about 3 seconds. So I immediately prepared a second test for the next time I needed to use the bathroom (since the instructions said not to drink a lot of water to make yourself pee for the test) and again, the test came back positive almost immediately even with a different method of taking it.

We were pregnant!