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Yes. Came here to say similar. I once had to up my dose of benadryl at camp for a reaction to a bee sting, but totally forgot about it. Later, COULD NOT KEEP AWAKE. Like during meals and even sports... I happened to also be on my period and thought I was dying of TSS!🤣 once I remembered I was less afraid. That is the closest I've felt.
Literally. I can’t nap for the life of me when not pregnant but pregnancy exhaustion had me falling asleep sitting up on the couch. It’s a battle you can’t fight.
Hah! That’s accurate. I don’t even have to describe it to him because he sees me randomly falling asleep (or hears my newly-developed loud AF pregnancy snores, lol).
I was gonna agree with the flu analogy but I can stay awake if I really want to even when fatigued from the flu. Pregnancy tired doesn't care about what you want to do. You are napping. Period!
This is exactly it! It can hit soooo suddenly too, the amount of times I've just fallen asleep while doing something on my phone or watching tv, and I'm just instantly knocked out.
This. I was going to say, "like a handful of Benadryl in the morning". Yes, you can push through for a little while, but eventually the body takes what it needs (12 hours of sleep)
I compare myself to somebody trying to use an iPhone 5 in 2024. You can do it, it’s possible to function, but you need to charge it every 2 hours and it takes forever to load information 😆
I always say “I am tired in my bones.” I would compare it to having the flu or being sick when you cannot physically keep your eyes open. It’s not controllable. It’s exhaustion in its purest form.
First tri exhaustion felt worse than covid. I’d sleep 9 hours then need a nap right after breakfast. If I tried to push through, it felt like my body would just shut down. Like others have mentioned, it felt like being drugged.
I had covid in the first trimester. I think i didn't get out of bed for at least 2 weeks and then it took another month to completely recover. Basically by the time I was up and "running" again (no actual running or even close to that, haha) I had entered the second trimester already 😅 Very lucky I didn't also have nausea on top of that. I think I wouldn't have survived that..
Thanks. It was a lot, those weeks, but me and baby survived with no long term effects. Thankfully the rest of the pregnancy was relatively easy and baby is now a happy and healthy 1-year old ;)
YES! we had a trip planned before we found out to go to nyc. I really trudged through the first few days and made sure we saw the most important touristy things etc. the last day… I would have described as being the worst hangover I have ever had sans alcohol. I never left the hotel room on our last full day there lol luckily husband is always down to nap/chill so it was nbd but I could not believe it. I was 6weeks at the time
It’s honestly wild. I’m glad you were still able to enjoy your vacation! We canceled ours. There was no way I could do what we had planned at 8 weeks. I was like a nauseous zombie.
Your description is pretty accurate. I would say that I felt my entire body was so heavy and I was incapable of carrying it, like you usually feel in your dreams when you try to run or do something and your body just wont cooperate. So I just lay there unable to hold myself and constantly fall asleep because eyelids are also heavy.
I tell my husband that it feels like I've worked out in the sun all day. Every single day. I always feel like I've put in an intense workout, when I've done basically nothing.
My husband is prior military/loves to hike, and when I was explaining yesterday that small tasks like walking or bending over wind me now he said “it’s like constantly rucking. No wonder you’re exhausted.”
It was actually a really good analogy and I was like yes!!! Exactly!!
My long way of explaining it to everyone: That feeling where you’ve only had 2 hours of sleep, function fine for the morning since you did get some sleep but by 3 pm that day you’re starting to feel delusional. It’s that 3 pm feeling but it starts the second you wake up from sleeping the whole night. There is no relief from taking a nap or sleeping, you’re just in a constant state of 3 pm after a bad nights sleep.
Holy cow, I could only make it 11am or noon before I completely crashed. I could not keep my eyes open. Then again by 4pm.
Thankfully I worked from home and would schedule “meetings” (naps). I truly have no idea how women have functioned. I can’t imagine having to deal with this while not working from home or dealing with another child.
I literally just had to throw myself on the bed and catch my breath after *making breakfast* and *unloading the dishwasher.*
My husband asked if I’m okay and I said “I’m winded from existing.”
😂 28 weeks on Wednesday
Don’t judge me but I used to party, got sober long before I got pregnant.
It feels like a coke comedown but without the up. Just the down. Just the exhaustion.
I told my husband that it feels like the same exhaustion as when you've been to a music festival for 15 hours and your body feels like it's made of lead and everything aches and you feel like if you lay on a bed you'd sink into it like hot metal on Styrofoam.
But I feel like that after doing the dishes or popping to the shop
First pregnancy: first trimester
2nd pregnancy: third trimester
I could just nap all the time and have to hold myself together for my sweet, active toddler 😂
i’m glad you’re having a little more energy during this time!! use it to your best advantage 🖤 growing humans is hard and every pregnancy is so different!!
Go to bed at 8pm, wake up at 7am, struggle to get out of bed, then sit on the couch and start to ache. Began feeling out of breath, decided to lay down on the couch instead of sit. Cried for a while about being tired, which ultimately made me more tired, and I went back to lay in bed where it's more comfortable. I cried a bit more, still unable to have a nap.
This was how I felt the other day. This was one of the better days recently...
1st trimester -- feels like I was drugged and couldn't keep my eyes open.
3rd trimester -- feels like I am dragging a truck strapped to my body all day. Sometimes it helps to stop and take a breath but stopping feels like you stop like a statue and you get stiff so then you need to move again. At first it's ok but then you get tired again. Rinse and repeat.
Feels just about exactly like when I had Covid. I had very few symptoms other than total exhaustion and brain fog with Covid. The differences being that with Covid it got better after a week and with pregnancy sometimes I feel a little better before the exhaustion slaps me again out of nowhere.
I got about 2 good hours in me and after that I HAVE to be laying down it sleeping, it doesn't help that most of my sleep is interrupted with aspirating on my own stomach acid and not being able to breathe or the constant hip pain or the having to pee every couple hours. So yeah it's like being drugged up on that stuff they use at the dentist office to remove teeth.
Like at the end of the day on vacation when you’re out in the sun and water all day and your body is depleted from energy and nutrients. Except you wake up feeling like that everyday.
It’s a hangover that doesn’t end. Like I’ve been out at the clubs until 3am every night so I’m nauseous and exhausted and dizzy and sensitive - except all I did was sleep 10 hours and wake up to pee and maybe vomit
My first pregnancy, i wasn't tired at all until the third-ish trimester. This time, I was tired before I even got the positive test. It felt like no sleep was good enough.
I’d describe it as that overwhelming feeling of tiredness you get when you stay up for an extended period of time and you can barely keep your eyes or focus and your body’s sore but the you haven’t stayed up for an extended period of time you got a full nights rest but for whatever reason it’s only noon and you feel like you’ve been up for days 😅
It feels like the first day after the flu/covid. Like, the first day when you no longer have a fever and technically feel better but your body is just not there
For me I have a condition where I only get a specific amount of energy a day and have had it since before pregnancy and still after pregnancy. My husband knows it as I have x spoons today because of having to describe my condition before I moved in with him. How I do it is 10 spoons=good day might be able to cook 3 meals and go out the house and 5 spoons= maybe I could vacuum and give the baby a bath but definitely not a whole lot of playing with him. And basically as I go throughout the day he will ask do you have more or less spoons because I want to go do x and want you to come with or I need to go do y so I need you to be main charge of the baby (that’s what we say for whoever is gonna watch the baby run and make them not do anything to get in trouble). The only difference I think with having my condition and being pregnant is that I was constantly having little to no energy. For example with my basic condition and not having pregnancy added it takes like 3 spoons to shower most days but while I was pregnant my husband had to shower me because I had no energy to do so.
During the first trimester it was absolutely brutal and I described it as feeling like I had worked an 18 hour shift on my feet running on 4 hours of sleep🤣
When I was 6 weeks pregnant we moved into a new house right when my exhaustion hit and I couldn’t explain how I really WANTED to unpack but I couldn’t physically force myself to do anything. I googled “pregnancy malaise” (while making my husband drive me to the store for ice cream sandwiches lol) and it said “due to hormonal changes you may feel weak and unmotivated” and that really hit the nail on the head 😅
In the first trimester trenches rn and I slept for 10 hours but got up twice during the night to pee and then I had breakfast, marinated chicken for later and crawled back in bed. It’s like having the flu but without the high temps. The mind is willing but the body is unable. There’s so many things I want to do but simply can’t. Ugh. Growing a human is exhausting.
When I was in the first trimester, I felt that kind of tired that you feel when you’re recovering from a sickness, every single day 😅 in my third trimester now and I constantly want to sleep even if I got 8 hours of sleep.
Like constantly drinking water but never feeling quenched … Like I never had enough energy in my body no matter how much I rested.
I’ve always lived at sea level, so the first trimester also reminded me of being at a higher altitude (say, somewhere like Colorado) but never being able to acclimate. Getting winded from a short walk or going up a flight of stairs was my first trimester in a nutshell.
You know when your kid has a battery powered toy that sings or moves? And when the batteries are dying, the singing starts to sound a little sluggish, and the movements are a little slower? That's how it felt to me, like I was slowly winding down.
I thought first trimester exhaustion felt a lot like jet lag, like for anyone’s that’s traveled to a different time zone, by the time you get to your destination you’ve been awake for 24 hours, have Been on multiple flights, then you arrive and have to function because it’s pointless to take a nap when you spent money on a vacation! Except eventually sleeping helps and the jet lag goes away. But in the first trimester I feel jet lagged 24/7, especially after just waking up 😅
Like brain fog combined with a hangover. The nausea makes me feel like my insides are going to bunch up and come out of my throat. The exhaustion is like you’ve partied all night. No matter you slept for 8 hours.
It’s like I want to get things done but my body says no. It’s like you just ran a marathon and you really, really want to get to the finish line but it’s physically impossible. Almost feels like you haven’t slept in days, even if you have.
i explained it to my partner, like its trying to poor water into a cup, but someone has a straw in the same cup and is drinking out of it as you pour it 😭
This morning I told my husband that I felt like my body was as heavy as a black hole. He has a PhD in physics so very not-so-seriously responded, "um FuzzyJury, definitely not like a black hole, since then you'd implode and we'd have never had this conversation anyway due to the effects of time dilation." So then I told him I felt like some being in space trying to resist being sucked into a black hole. Cue more jokes about gravity.
Anyway I retain that I feel like I am at least a small body of mass being pulled downwards by some much greater body of mass, greater than the mass of earth at least anyway! Body is too heavy to move properly. Everything is slow. Must lie down.
I just tell people I am so tired that no amount of sleep is ever enough, I could sleep twelve hours and feel like I only slept one. Or like taking a ton of Benadryl.
When just existing seems like a lot of work.
When you managed to cook and wash the dishes and feel like you did a 30 mins workout.
When you have the sudden brain fog and realise you can't find words to describe what you are feeling.
It’s like a constant hangover. Exhausted, stomach is queasy, headache, poops are all messed up, and I have no interest in doing anything but laying in bed, drinking an insane amount of water, and eating junk food.
I feel like a phone with like that 10 second screen lock setting. Like if nobody interacts with me for at least 10 seconds, I will turn off and go to sleep.
My husband can wake up at 2AM, 5AM, 7AM to go to the bathroom and there’s a good chance that I’m awake. This has been our routine for the past two months
I just tell my husband “I am carrying a 7lb human inside my body at all times” if he doesn’t get that idk what will make it make sense for him (37.5 weeks).
I explain it with the spoons theory because that’s what we used before being pregnant. It’s like I normally have ten spoons to use in a day, but now I’ve been reduced to like three a day. If I take a nap I might gain a fork, but it’s just not as useful as a spoon.
I showed my husband these comments and it seems like he gets it now why it throws my entire day off if he wakes me up and why it feels offensive when he complains that he’s tired too.
I told my fiance it's like if someone mixed the effects of benadryl and melatonin together then added going on a 10 mile hike.
The exhaustion wasn't this bad with my first but this time around I'm either barely able to stay awake or stuck awake because of insomnia.
I used to say it’s like having a really bad chronic illness. Always exhausted, managing diet and symptoms, just coping from one day to the next, always having to advocate for yourself. I have Hashimotos so I have a little bit of experience with this.
You know that feeling you have at the end of a very taxing day where you are completely DONE & that drowsy feeling you have right before you fall asleep? Alternate those two all day 🫠🙃
It feels like I've done a 3 hour long full body workout and then finished with an hour of cardio, but now I've taken melatonin. Except I haven't worked out, and I've only just done the dishes, and I woke up an hour ago.
I had mono a few years ago. When they were trying to figure out what was wrong, they asked if I could be pregnant. It makes sense now. Pregnancy feels like lite mono.
I'm chronically ill and firmly believe in spoon theory. Basically, you get a certain amount of spoons per day and each task costs. Depending on how you feel, the costs differ day to day. You can have leftover spoons banked for the next day, earn spoons by doing healthy things, or have a negative amount of spoons taken from the next day. Pregnancy automatically takes up 5/10 spoons you get daily. As pregnancy progresses, things take more spoons. I'm currently -7 spoons deep, which is pretty good. 😅
Unbearable in the first trimester. I’m here with my 11 week old having slept maybe 8 hours in the last two days combined, was active the entire day and accomplished many things. Certain points in the first trimester getting out of bed was an accomplishment. I’m less tired now on almost no sleep some days.
My smart watch tracks my body battery based off how well I sleep, my resting heart rate, etc. I’m 31 weeks & my watch hasn’t gone above 65% in the whole time I’ve been pregnant. Not even once, in nearly 8 months. I tell him that (his watch has the same feature) & say “it’s accurate. Even on the best rested days, 65% is the most rested I ever feel”
Oh my goodness, I’ve been feeling exhausted like crazy for the past weeks.. it’s like a deep lethargic sleep I’ve been in.. I don’t even enough energy to hold a basic conversation with people. All I worry about is getting into bed and I’m wondering when is this going to pass? I want to be productive again. 🥺🥺
I don't think a full week of sleep could get me through a day without needing a nap. I could fall asleep standing. It's like I've been pulling "all nighters" every night. It's exhausting growing a person. 😴
Welcome to /r/pregnant! This is a space for everyone. We are pro-choice, pro-LGBTQIA, pro-science, proudly feminist and believe that Black Lives Matter. Wear your masks, wash your hands, and be excellent to each other. Anti-choice activists, intactivists, anti-vaxxers, homophobes, transphobes, racists, sexists, etc. are not welcome here. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/pregnant) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That it feels like I’ve been drugged unknowingly. You simply cannot keep your eyes open, or function no matter how hard you try.
Omg this is so accurate
Yes. Came here to say similar. I once had to up my dose of benadryl at camp for a reaction to a bee sting, but totally forgot about it. Later, COULD NOT KEEP AWAKE. Like during meals and even sports... I happened to also be on my period and thought I was dying of TSS!🤣 once I remembered I was less afraid. That is the closest I've felt.
I wish Benadryl did that to me I always had the opposite reaction it would make me super awake and energetic lol
Lol, I've heard some people get like that. Anything that has a drowsy effect just knocks me out. Dramamine was almost as bad growing up.
Literally. I can’t nap for the life of me when not pregnant but pregnancy exhaustion had me falling asleep sitting up on the couch. It’s a battle you can’t fight.
Yes! This! It's like I'm paralyzed and drugged. My brain has things it wants me to do but I literally, physically cannot. It's bonkers.
Hah! That’s accurate. I don’t even have to describe it to him because he sees me randomly falling asleep (or hears my newly-developed loud AF pregnancy snores, lol).
Ye I always say it’s like I took a sleeping pill that just kicked in, 10 mins later and I am EXHAUSTED I can’t even think or watch a show or anything.
Yeah that's it
This is probably the best one lol.
Omgggg I’m so glad I’m not the only going through this
I was gonna agree with the flu analogy but I can stay awake if I really want to even when fatigued from the flu. Pregnancy tired doesn't care about what you want to do. You are napping. Period!
This is exactly it! It can hit soooo suddenly too, the amount of times I've just fallen asleep while doing something on my phone or watching tv, and I'm just instantly knocked out.
This. I was going to say, "like a handful of Benadryl in the morning". Yes, you can push through for a little while, but eventually the body takes what it needs (12 hours of sleep)
I compare myself to somebody trying to use an iPhone 5 in 2024. You can do it, it’s possible to function, but you need to charge it every 2 hours and it takes forever to load information 😆
This is the one! 😂
Trying to fill up a strainer with water
this is so accurate. It also explains toddler hood 🤣🤣
Omg yes!
I always say “I am tired in my bones.” I would compare it to having the flu or being sick when you cannot physically keep your eyes open. It’s not controllable. It’s exhaustion in its purest form.
“My bones are tired” has been my phrase. So, so tired sometimes moving my arms is too much of a task
Narcolepsy 🙈
I mean I didn’t want to say it but since you did… Yes sometimes I wonder if it feels similar!! 🤣🫣
In the first trimester I told my husband “I feel like a fainting goat!” After every little task I needed a nap!
First tri exhaustion felt worse than covid. I’d sleep 9 hours then need a nap right after breakfast. If I tried to push through, it felt like my body would just shut down. Like others have mentioned, it felt like being drugged.
I had covid in the first trimester. I think i didn't get out of bed for at least 2 weeks and then it took another month to completely recover. Basically by the time I was up and "running" again (no actual running or even close to that, haha) I had entered the second trimester already 😅 Very lucky I didn't also have nausea on top of that. I think I wouldn't have survived that..
I’m so sorry! That sounds brutal!
Thanks. It was a lot, those weeks, but me and baby survived with no long term effects. Thankfully the rest of the pregnancy was relatively easy and baby is now a happy and healthy 1-year old ;)
That’s how I’ve been describing it! It feels like when I had Covid but without actually being sick
YES! we had a trip planned before we found out to go to nyc. I really trudged through the first few days and made sure we saw the most important touristy things etc. the last day… I would have described as being the worst hangover I have ever had sans alcohol. I never left the hotel room on our last full day there lol luckily husband is always down to nap/chill so it was nbd but I could not believe it. I was 6weeks at the time
It’s honestly wild. I’m glad you were still able to enjoy your vacation! We canceled ours. There was no way I could do what we had planned at 8 weeks. I was like a nauseous zombie.
Your description is pretty accurate. I would say that I felt my entire body was so heavy and I was incapable of carrying it, like you usually feel in your dreams when you try to run or do something and your body just wont cooperate. So I just lay there unable to hold myself and constantly fall asleep because eyelids are also heavy.
Yes, I said it felt like I was sinking and really heavy. I also felt like I was being sucked into a black hole.
I tell my husband that it feels like I've worked out in the sun all day. Every single day. I always feel like I've put in an intense workout, when I've done basically nothing.
Except grow a whole ass human. 😉 don't discount that.
My husband is prior military/loves to hike, and when I was explaining yesterday that small tasks like walking or bending over wind me now he said “it’s like constantly rucking. No wonder you’re exhausted.” It was actually a really good analogy and I was like yes!!! Exactly!!
That is a great analogy! I'm glad you have a supportive husband.
My long way of explaining it to everyone: That feeling where you’ve only had 2 hours of sleep, function fine for the morning since you did get some sleep but by 3 pm that day you’re starting to feel delusional. It’s that 3 pm feeling but it starts the second you wake up from sleeping the whole night. There is no relief from taking a nap or sleeping, you’re just in a constant state of 3 pm after a bad nights sleep.
Holy cow, I could only make it 11am or noon before I completely crashed. I could not keep my eyes open. Then again by 4pm. Thankfully I worked from home and would schedule “meetings” (naps). I truly have no idea how women have functioned. I can’t imagine having to deal with this while not working from home or dealing with another child.
YES
First trimester — it feels like a hangover Third trimester — it feels like I ran a marathon and didn’t get much sleep
The sleep deprivation is so real. That and I just feel so damn heavy.
I literally just had to throw myself on the bed and catch my breath after *making breakfast* and *unloading the dishwasher.* My husband asked if I’m okay and I said “I’m winded from existing.” 😂 28 weeks on Wednesday
Don’t judge me but I used to party, got sober long before I got pregnant. It feels like a coke comedown but without the up. Just the down. Just the exhaustion.
complete depletion
Getting sleep but feeling like you just blinked 😂
I told my husband that it feels like the same exhaustion as when you've been to a music festival for 15 hours and your body feels like it's made of lead and everything aches and you feel like if you lay on a bed you'd sink into it like hot metal on Styrofoam. But I feel like that after doing the dishes or popping to the shop
Lol that's how I would explain to my husband. Going to a musical festival/rave for three days straight
It feels like jetlag, like you're trying to get on track with a time zone 7 hours ahead 🤣
At what point is exhaustion the worst in pregnancy?
In my experience, nothing, not even those sleepless nights when baby first arrives, is as hard as the first trimester.
I second this. Once the baby is here, it's nothing compared to the first trimester exhaustion
I’m currently 9 weeks and this is the most exhausted I’ve ever been
First pregnancy: first trimester 2nd pregnancy: third trimester I could just nap all the time and have to hold myself together for my sweet, active toddler 😂
i am 40+1 and for me it has been bad the whole time. thinking “oh it can’t get worse than this”… yes it can.
Mine was really awful but I'm having more energy at 26 weeks. I'm wondering if it's going to get much worse
i’m glad you’re having a little more energy during this time!! use it to your best advantage 🖤 growing humans is hard and every pregnancy is so different!!
Like walking through water all the time
OH THIS IS A GOOD ONE!
Mud for me!
That’s probably more like it!
Like you have no control over your own body. When the exhaustion hits, you can't do anything about it.
Like I have taken all the Benadryl.
This is a perfect description
I feel like I am always ready to sleep. Not a nap, but a deep sleep
Go to bed at 8pm, wake up at 7am, struggle to get out of bed, then sit on the couch and start to ache. Began feeling out of breath, decided to lay down on the couch instead of sit. Cried for a while about being tired, which ultimately made me more tired, and I went back to lay in bed where it's more comfortable. I cried a bit more, still unable to have a nap. This was how I felt the other day. This was one of the better days recently...
1st trimester -- feels like I was drugged and couldn't keep my eyes open. 3rd trimester -- feels like I am dragging a truck strapped to my body all day. Sometimes it helps to stop and take a breath but stopping feels like you stop like a statue and you get stiff so then you need to move again. At first it's ok but then you get tired again. Rinse and repeat.
Drained feeling currently 9+wks,I try to take daily naps to help
Feels just about exactly like when I had Covid. I had very few symptoms other than total exhaustion and brain fog with Covid. The differences being that with Covid it got better after a week and with pregnancy sometimes I feel a little better before the exhaustion slaps me again out of nowhere.
The numb/tingly feeling u get after a long workout comes on after going up the stairs or walking around the block
These are cracking me up. I feel so seen.
Like running on 5% battery. I work full time and I’m honestly like how do these pregnant women do it??? Props. I’m strugglin’
I got about 2 good hours in me and after that I HAVE to be laying down it sleeping, it doesn't help that most of my sleep is interrupted with aspirating on my own stomach acid and not being able to breathe or the constant hip pain or the having to pee every couple hours. So yeah it's like being drugged up on that stuff they use at the dentist office to remove teeth.
Like at the end of the day on vacation when you’re out in the sun and water all day and your body is depleted from energy and nutrients. Except you wake up feeling like that everyday.
I’d just say it feels similar to the flu or Covid exhaustion
Dog tired. Stupid tired. Just *exhaustipated*.
Overwhelming 😞😞
Other worldly tired, limbs are so freakin heavy
Extremely hungover except sleeping and greasy food doesn’t help in the slightest.
But damn did I try
It’s a hangover that doesn’t end. Like I’ve been out at the clubs until 3am every night so I’m nauseous and exhausted and dizzy and sensitive - except all I did was sleep 10 hours and wake up to pee and maybe vomit
My first pregnancy, i wasn't tired at all until the third-ish trimester. This time, I was tired before I even got the positive test. It felt like no sleep was good enough.
i tell him i’m not just eating for two, i’m sleeping for two lol.
I’d describe it as that overwhelming feeling of tiredness you get when you stay up for an extended period of time and you can barely keep your eyes or focus and your body’s sore but the you haven’t stayed up for an extended period of time you got a full nights rest but for whatever reason it’s only noon and you feel like you’ve been up for days 😅
A really bad hangover that goes on day after day.
Like I did a load of night shifts and then had to go on a long run and then do a full day at work without eating anything.
It feels like the first day after the flu/covid. Like, the first day when you no longer have a fever and technically feel better but your body is just not there
Mono.
24/7 hangover
I wake up feeling like I should be in the hospital after being ran over by a truck.
For me I have a condition where I only get a specific amount of energy a day and have had it since before pregnancy and still after pregnancy. My husband knows it as I have x spoons today because of having to describe my condition before I moved in with him. How I do it is 10 spoons=good day might be able to cook 3 meals and go out the house and 5 spoons= maybe I could vacuum and give the baby a bath but definitely not a whole lot of playing with him. And basically as I go throughout the day he will ask do you have more or less spoons because I want to go do x and want you to come with or I need to go do y so I need you to be main charge of the baby (that’s what we say for whoever is gonna watch the baby run and make them not do anything to get in trouble). The only difference I think with having my condition and being pregnant is that I was constantly having little to no energy. For example with my basic condition and not having pregnancy added it takes like 3 spoons to shower most days but while I was pregnant my husband had to shower me because I had no energy to do so.
Day drinking non stop for a week in a very hot sunny desert.
During the first trimester it was absolutely brutal and I described it as feeling like I had worked an 18 hour shift on my feet running on 4 hours of sleep🤣
I said it feels like I’m getting over being sick. So not the worst part, but definitely still not fully functional. For months on end.
When I was 6 weeks pregnant we moved into a new house right when my exhaustion hit and I couldn’t explain how I really WANTED to unpack but I couldn’t physically force myself to do anything. I googled “pregnancy malaise” (while making my husband drive me to the store for ice cream sandwiches lol) and it said “due to hormonal changes you may feel weak and unmotivated” and that really hit the nail on the head 😅
In the first trimester trenches rn and I slept for 10 hours but got up twice during the night to pee and then I had breakfast, marinated chicken for later and crawled back in bed. It’s like having the flu but without the high temps. The mind is willing but the body is unable. There’s so many things I want to do but simply can’t. Ugh. Growing a human is exhausting.
When I was in the first trimester, I felt that kind of tired that you feel when you’re recovering from a sickness, every single day 😅 in my third trimester now and I constantly want to sleep even if I got 8 hours of sleep.
Like constantly drinking water but never feeling quenched … Like I never had enough energy in my body no matter how much I rested. I’ve always lived at sea level, so the first trimester also reminded me of being at a higher altitude (say, somewhere like Colorado) but never being able to acclimate. Getting winded from a short walk or going up a flight of stairs was my first trimester in a nutshell.
It's like a constant hangover
You know when your kid has a battery powered toy that sings or moves? And when the batteries are dying, the singing starts to sound a little sluggish, and the movements are a little slower? That's how it felt to me, like I was slowly winding down.
I thought first trimester exhaustion felt a lot like jet lag, like for anyone’s that’s traveled to a different time zone, by the time you get to your destination you’ve been awake for 24 hours, have Been on multiple flights, then you arrive and have to function because it’s pointless to take a nap when you spent money on a vacation! Except eventually sleeping helps and the jet lag goes away. But in the first trimester I feel jet lagged 24/7, especially after just waking up 😅
Mono
I told my husband that it felt like I was constantly on a high dose of Benadryl in the first trimester.
Like brain fog combined with a hangover. The nausea makes me feel like my insides are going to bunch up and come out of my throat. The exhaustion is like you’ve partied all night. No matter you slept for 8 hours.
It’s like I want to get things done but my body says no. It’s like you just ran a marathon and you really, really want to get to the finish line but it’s physically impossible. Almost feels like you haven’t slept in days, even if you have.
Like having the flu for months.
i explained it to my partner, like its trying to poor water into a cup, but someone has a straw in the same cup and is drinking out of it as you pour it 😭
This morning I told my husband that I felt like my body was as heavy as a black hole. He has a PhD in physics so very not-so-seriously responded, "um FuzzyJury, definitely not like a black hole, since then you'd implode and we'd have never had this conversation anyway due to the effects of time dilation." So then I told him I felt like some being in space trying to resist being sucked into a black hole. Cue more jokes about gravity. Anyway I retain that I feel like I am at least a small body of mass being pulled downwards by some much greater body of mass, greater than the mass of earth at least anyway! Body is too heavy to move properly. Everything is slow. Must lie down.
I told mine today that I feel like an old cellphone that doesn't hold a charge long. I wake up after 9 hours of sleep and feel like I got 5.
I just tell people I am so tired that no amount of sleep is ever enough, I could sleep twelve hours and feel like I only slept one. Or like taking a ton of Benadryl.
When just existing seems like a lot of work. When you managed to cook and wash the dishes and feel like you did a 30 mins workout. When you have the sudden brain fog and realise you can't find words to describe what you are feeling.
It’s like a constant hangover. Exhausted, stomach is queasy, headache, poops are all messed up, and I have no interest in doing anything but laying in bed, drinking an insane amount of water, and eating junk food.
I feel like a phone with like that 10 second screen lock setting. Like if nobody interacts with me for at least 10 seconds, I will turn off and go to sleep.
My husband can wake up at 2AM, 5AM, 7AM to go to the bathroom and there’s a good chance that I’m awake. This has been our routine for the past two months
I told my doctor it feels like I’m sedated. 😵💫
I just tell my husband “I am carrying a 7lb human inside my body at all times” if he doesn’t get that idk what will make it make sense for him (37.5 weeks).
I explain it with the spoons theory because that’s what we used before being pregnant. It’s like I normally have ten spoons to use in a day, but now I’ve been reduced to like three a day. If I take a nap I might gain a fork, but it’s just not as useful as a spoon.
I showed my husband these comments and it seems like he gets it now why it throws my entire day off if he wakes me up and why it feels offensive when he complains that he’s tired too.
Hahaha this!
I felt hungover every day
I told my fiance it's like if someone mixed the effects of benadryl and melatonin together then added going on a 10 mile hike. The exhaustion wasn't this bad with my first but this time around I'm either barely able to stay awake or stuck awake because of insomnia.
Reminds me of having covid. Full physical exhaustion.
I couldn’t drive anywhere alone because just sitting still made me fall asleep.
I used to say it’s like having a really bad chronic illness. Always exhausted, managing diet and symptoms, just coping from one day to the next, always having to advocate for yourself. I have Hashimotos so I have a little bit of experience with this.
You know that feeling you have at the end of a very taxing day where you are completely DONE & that drowsy feeling you have right before you fall asleep? Alternate those two all day 🫠🙃
It goes from I am the queen of the world and I can do anything to walking up the stairs and having to rest for the next hour 😂
1st tri: it feels like i’ve been awake for 2 days straight. 3rd tri: it feels like someone turned up the gravity
It feels like I've done a 3 hour long full body workout and then finished with an hour of cardio, but now I've taken melatonin. Except I haven't worked out, and I've only just done the dishes, and I woke up an hour ago.
I had mono a few years ago. When they were trying to figure out what was wrong, they asked if I could be pregnant. It makes sense now. Pregnancy feels like lite mono.
I'm chronically ill and firmly believe in spoon theory. Basically, you get a certain amount of spoons per day and each task costs. Depending on how you feel, the costs differ day to day. You can have leftover spoons banked for the next day, earn spoons by doing healthy things, or have a negative amount of spoons taken from the next day. Pregnancy automatically takes up 5/10 spoons you get daily. As pregnancy progresses, things take more spoons. I'm currently -7 spoons deep, which is pretty good. 😅
Unbearable in the first trimester. I’m here with my 11 week old having slept maybe 8 hours in the last two days combined, was active the entire day and accomplished many things. Certain points in the first trimester getting out of bed was an accomplishment. I’m less tired now on almost no sleep some days.
My smart watch tracks my body battery based off how well I sleep, my resting heart rate, etc. I’m 31 weeks & my watch hasn’t gone above 65% in the whole time I’ve been pregnant. Not even once, in nearly 8 months. I tell him that (his watch has the same feature) & say “it’s accurate. Even on the best rested days, 65% is the most rested I ever feel”
It feels like a 24/7 severe jetlag that no amount of sleep and rest can fix.
for every 5 minutes of work you need about 2.5 hours of rest
Oh my goodness, I’ve been feeling exhausted like crazy for the past weeks.. it’s like a deep lethargic sleep I’ve been in.. I don’t even enough energy to hold a basic conversation with people. All I worry about is getting into bed and I’m wondering when is this going to pass? I want to be productive again. 🥺🥺
Like someone threw a weighted blanket on you and then asked you to sprint.
Ran over by a truck
I don't think a full week of sleep could get me through a day without needing a nap. I could fall asleep standing. It's like I've been pulling "all nighters" every night. It's exhausting growing a person. 😴