Getting Through the First Trimester on an Animal-Based Diet

Published on February 25, 2022 by Ashley Rothstein

getting through the first trimester

Hey mama! You probably came to this post because you’re knee-deep in morning sickness and/or the feels of the first trimester, and you are trying to find some relief.

When I got pregnant, I wasn’t expecting to feel what I felt.

I had a kick-ass diet for years pre-pregnancy, took nutrient-dense supplements, and overall felt very nourished, so I was quite surprised when (seemingly overnight) at about 6 weeks pregnant, I became possessed with demonic hormonally-charged nausea, powerful emotional fluctuations, fatigue, and some sleep troubles.

My body felt like it changed overnight, and it felt like a “sink or swim” situation…adapt quickly or continue drowning.

In this post, I’m going to go over the things that helped me feel better and the lessons I learned in hindsight. Every woman’s experience is different, but I find that when I share my experience, women reach out with many similar parallels.

I hope some of these suggestions here help you find relief.

Update: I had my baby! Read my full birth story here or check out the pregnancy section on my website for more animal-based pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and motherhood resources.

Heart & Soil Films featured our story in their mini-documentary, Nourished, which spotlights animal-based pregnancies. Click on the above image to watch it on YouTube.

Eat more food and more frequently…stay ahead of yourself

Morning sickness can feel like hell, so eating more food may feel counterintuitive when you’re in the thick of it. The last thing you probably want to do when you feel like you’re going to hurl something up is put something else in your stomach.

But – for me at least – it usually worked. It’s tricky though…

The sicker you feel, the less motivated you probably are to eat. But the less you eat, the sicker you’ll likely feel.

I found that if I forced myself to eat a good breakfast as early as possible, it almost always led to the best outcome for the day. I called it “getting ahead” of myself. This is still true for me now in my third trimester.

Pre-pregnancy, I was eating two large meals a day and I didn’t eat my first meal until around noon. I loved intermittent fasting and my body felt great on this schedule.

I kept this up until about 6 weeks pregnant which was when the morning sickness kicked in. I tried to hold on to my pre-pregnancy diet with the jaws of life, but the more I held on, the worse I felt.

I soon realized that I was completely underestimating both the amount of food my pregnant body needed and the frequency in which I needed to eat to feel functional.

Your pregnant body is using up so much energy. Not only that, but pregnancy puts you in an entirely different metabolic state. If you don’t eat enough and often, your blood sugar will likely drop pretty low. This can make you feel like absolute garbage.

I wore a CGM for 2 weeks pre-pregnancy and learned I naturally sat on the lower end of blood sugar – both fasting and even after eating – so when I got pregnant, I really felt it when I didn’t eat enough and often. I even had hot flashes and dizzy spells a few times and had to lay down to regulate.

Surrendering my attachment to the way I ate pre-pregnancy was hard. My stomach was not used to the constant influx of food and I absolutely hated eating so much and so often at first. Requiring so much food and eating so frequently made me feel like there was something wrong with my body. I was also scared I’d gain weight if I ate more. But I felt like crap, so I knew I had to do something different.

With trial and error, I learned:

On the days I…

• ate a good breakfast (balanced with protein + fat + carbs) as early in the day as possible,
• put something in my stomach every 2-3 hours (sometimes every 1-2 hours) from then on,
• ate average-sized meals (small meals left me almost immediately hungry + big meals zonked me out and put me to sleep), and
• made sure all of my meals had protein, fat, and carbs

…I felt way better.

The nausea usually still lingered, but it was less powerful and I even found some periods of complete relief.

The more I delayed eating (even by 30-60 minutes), the worse I felt. If I delayed too long, I felt really crappy and I had to play catch-up. Playing catch-up – bringing my body and mind back up from a deficient state – was a long process and sucked.

I put down an incredible amount of food (including lots of cheese, fruit, and milk) during my first trimester and didn’t gain a pound. This goes to show how much I underestimated my food needs in the beginning.

So, mama…set that ego aside and eat! Early, a lot, and often.

Strategically hydrate + don’t skip out on electrolytes

If you’re eating more food (and more often than you’re used to), you may find that it’s a bit harder to hydrate.

I’ve always heard you should hydrate 30-60 minutes outside of meals for optimal digestion.

Pre-pregnancy, I ate my first meal around noon and my second meal around 5pm. This gave me three wide open windows where I hydrated with plenty of salt water and electrolytes. My body felt great doing this.

Once I committed to frequent meals while pregnant, it seemed like I all I was doing was eating. As soon as my food settled, it was time to eat again. My hydration windows vanished.

For the past couple years, I have been salting (or adding electrolytes to) nearly 100% of my water. I occasionally crave a sip of unsalted water, but anything more than a sip usually bloats me and affects my mood and digestion.

I tried both salted and unsalted water during my first trimester, and my experience was the same as it was pre-pregnancy. Salted water made me feel substantially better.

Sources like The Brewer Pregnancy Diet, Weston A Price, and Lily Nichols in her book Real Food for Pregnancy all speak about the importance of salt to support your pregnancy.

The body is under increased amounts of stress during pregnancy and sodium helps with adrenal gland function/stress relief, so if you’re pregnant, in addition to liberally salting your food, I highly recommend giving salted water a try. Not only does it help you get some extra salt in, but the salt seems to help with the absorption of water which prevents dehydration. I salt nearly 100% of my water these days.

If you’d like to try salted water, a good rule of thumb is to let your taste buds decide the amount that works best for you. Read more about that here.

Personally, I add either…

• 1 tsp of Redmond Real Salt (ASHLEYR for 15% off), or
• 1 packet of LMNT + 1/2 tsp of Redmond Real Salt

…to 32 oz of room temperature water. Mix it good, then sip. Don’t chug.

During my first trimester, I sipped as much salted water as I could between meals. I also kept a bedside glass of water for sipping throughout the night.

For me, food consumption and hydration seemed to go hand in hand. I found that if I was on top of my diet, I was less nauseous and could handle more water.

And some days, I felt really good and could go a bit longer between meals. I took advantage of the larger windows on these days and hydrated as much as possible.

Hydration is definitely important, but it is tricky in the first trimester, so do what you can.

For me, it helped to imagine a steady stream of nourishment throughout the day. Moderate amounts of both food and water in consistent intervals. Too much, too little, and any sort of inconsistency seemed to throw my body out of whack.

I’m obsessed with salt.

Find out why here.

Stay as close as possible to the foods you ate pre-pregnancy, but don’t hate yourself for giving into cravings

Oh, the first trimester cravings. These bad boys hit me like a truck.

Pre-pregnancy, whenever I heard women talk about pregnancy cravings, I thought they were full of crap. “Why would someone crave bread, crackers, pizza, and sweets? They must have had an unhealthy body/diet to begin with to crave those things.”

Ha…the joke was on me. During my first trimester, I had the craziest and most random cravings for things I hadn’t eaten in YEARS. Bread. Crackers. Butternut squash ravioli. Siete Foods nacho chips with grapes. Bagels with cream cheese. Cesar salad. Chocolate ice cream and chocolate chip cookies. Greek food. Indian food. Taco Bell (!).

The weirdest part? I wanted nothing to do with meat.

Pre-pregnancy, I ate mostly meat. And suddenly, I didn’t want to eat it at all. This felt so, so weird. It felt like I had been hijacked by some sort of food demon that was dictating these powerful cravings and keeping me away from all of the nutrient-dense foods that made me feel so good before getting pregnant.

Here are some things I did to manage:

• I made “home-cooked paleo” my new baseline. It was always my priority to maintain the best nutrition possible to fuel both myself and my baby, but I was challenged when the cravings came knocking. Some were so powerful that I felt like I must satisfy them, or else. To adjust, I created a new baseline. I decided I wouldn’t go off the rails…no restaurants, no processed sugar, no crap food…but I would compromise and add more paleo whole foods to satisfy my cravings. I ate fruits I don’t normally eat (like grapes…lots of grapes), nut-based breads, coconut milk ice cream, lots of cassava chips, gluten-free bread, Primal Kitchen condiments, spices I didn’t normally eat, and even some white rice and legumes (two exceptions to “paleo”). I cooked all of my meals, and if I was craving something in particular (like a Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme, In-N-Out burger, Cesar Salad, or orange chicken/chow mein, for example), I recreated the meals myself…paleo-style from scratch. See for yourself below. I’m quite proud of my Crunchwrap Supreme.
• I ate hard-boiled egg yolks instead of the whole egg. Eggs are a pregnancy super food. I wasn’t totally averse to them, but I rarely craved them or wanted them. Since the yolks have most of the nutrition, the easiest way for me to get eggs in was hard-boiling them and eating the yolks only. I found them easier to slurp down this way. I’m in my third trimester now and rarely crave eggs, so I still do this. What do I do with the whites? (I get this question a lot.) I wish I had a method to repurpose them, but I just throw them away.
• I dressed up my meats. Pretty much overnight, I went from eating mostly meat every day to not wanting meat at all. It was such a weird adjustment. I wasn’t able to eat a ton of meat during my first trimester, but to get as much as possible down, I dressed it up with Primal Food Kitchen condiments, cassava flour tortillas, or other dips like guacamole or honey mustard. I found that if meat was drowned in something else (like guac and a tortilla), I could stomach it way better and almost didn’t notice I was eating it.
• I (eventually) didn’t fight the carb/fruit cravings. My carb needs went way up in my first trimester. This has stayed pretty consistent throughout my pregnancy so far. I fought this at first, but once I allowed myself to eat the amount I craved, I felt better. Carbs and fruit sugar – as long as I paired them with protein and fat – also really helped me manage my blood sugar.
• I took nutrient-dense supplements to fill any dietary holes. More on this in the next section.
• I always fought for my pre-pregnancy diet. The cravings threw me for a loop, and I definitely explored them. I would initially feel satisfied when I gave in to a craving, but noticed I felt worse in the long run (especially if it was a food I didn’t normally eat pre-pregnancy). I didn’t like feeling crappy, so I always tried to get back to the foods I ate pre-pregnancy. I toggled back and forth between allowing myself to give in (to some extent) but also fighting hard to get my animal-based foods in. This was a dance that lasted until around 16 weeks. I would try to eliminate certain foods, feel okay for a short period of time, then crave them again and give in to the craving. The time between cravings got longer and longer and less strong. A few weeks into my second trimester, I was back to eating my pre-pregnancy foods and the intense cravings went away. For me, it helped to keep my eye on the prize, not give up, and not use my pregnancy as an excuse to “go off the rails.”

Want to learn more about my full real food supplement routine (and why you may want to consider ditching your manufactured supplements)?

Read this post here to learn more.

Whenever I researched first trimester remedies, I saw tons of stuff on magnesium and how good it was for morning sickness and pregnancy in general.

Magnesium has been a pillar supplement throughout my entire pregnancy.

It helped me with morning sickness, insomnia, constipation (+ god awful hemorrhoids), and mood stability. When I don’t take it, I really feel it.

My sleep starts to suck. I become constipated and moody. Then like clockwork, once I start to take it again, I sleep like a rock, feel motivated and calm, and have beautiful poops.

I stopped taking it for three days during my second trimester (the longest stretch in my entire pregnancy), and I got hemorrhoids! It felt like I was birthing spikey demons very slowly out of my butt whenever I went to the bathroom. I had never experienced such a horrible bathroom event. Once I started to take magnesium again, the hemorrhoids/constipation resolved entirely in just a few days.

If you’re interested in learning more about magnesium and it’s health benefits, I wrote an entire post on it here.

I linked the magnesium I use (and absolutely love) below. It has seven different types of magnesium.

I don’t love that it has a few other synthetic ingredients, but it’s the best one I’ve found so far. Both my husband and I (and lots of my readers) have had great experiences with it. I take two capsules at night with my evening meal.

BiOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough

Use code ASH10 for 10% off.

Want to learn more about oral magnesium vs. transdermal magnesium, the pros and cons of both, and how to figure out which method is for you?

Read this post here to learn more.

Avoid spicy food (unless it doesn’t bother you)

Spicy food usually isn’t found in an animal-based diet, so if you eat animal-based, you’re probably not used to having to consciously avoid it.

But those first trimester cravings may change things a bit.

I craved Indian food, Greek food, spaghetti, Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supremes, and lots of things filled with nightshades and other spices.

These foods tasted amazing when I ate them, but they’d leave me with crippling acid reflux that would create anxiety and significantly impair my sleep. Orange juice, lemon juice, and lime juice sometimes did this to me too.

As much as I enjoyed my quick little love affair with spicy foods, I had to give them up. I just can’t eat them these days without consequence. I hear this is a pretty consistent experience among pregnant women.

If you crave spicy foods, give them a try, pay attention to how your body responds, and adjust appropriately.

You may do fine with them (some women do), or the juice may not be worth the squeeze.

Consider raw dairy

Raw milk/dairy…such a controversial topic for pregnant women!

Before becoming pregnant, aside from the occasional block of raw cheese, I hadn’t had dairy in years as I have horrible reactions to pasteurized dairy.

But around 8-10 weeks pregnant, my body started screaming out for dairy. I craved it so much, so I tried pasteurized dairy (sour cream) on a whim and ended up feeling very ill (as expected).

Weston A. Price – a source I had been following for a long time and trust – has a lot of information on raw dairy in general that I’ve read. They recommend raw milk for pregnancy women in their Diet for Pregnant Women and Nursing Mothers, and the most successful remedy they’ve seen for morning sickness is sipping on raw milk throughout the day.

So I thought…why not give raw milk a try.

I did, and immediately felt so much vitality and a surge in energy. It was almost unreal! My body absolutely loved it and still does now. I drink about a quart of raw milk per day these days, sometimes more.

And the craziest part…I have no reactions whatsoever to raw milk. It feels like a superfood to my body.

Conventional medicine recommends against raw milk consumption for pregnant women (some sources even recommend against it for all people) due to bacterial concerns. The thing is…I’ve never read/heard any stories from people – pregnant or not pregnant – who have experienced food poisoning/bacterial problems from good, clean sources of raw milk. You would think that with such a harsh warning, you would see the testimonials to follow.

Everything I’ve read/heard about raw milk from a testimonial perspective (assuming the raw milk is from a good/clean source and the person has no serious underlying disease or issues) has been amazing. In fact, many people swear by it and preach that it has been fundamental in healing and nourishing their bodies. Some even claim it brought them back from the brink of death/decay from chronic health issues.

If you’re in Austin and are looking for a good source of raw milk, let me know. We get our raw milk from a local farm run by great people, and it’s also A2, so that’s a plus.

If you’re not in Austin and don’t have access to raw milk via a local farm, check out Raw Farm (ASHLEY20 for 20% off). The have a ton of raw milk products and ship to many states.

Strategically nap or avoid it altogether

When I researched first trimester fatigue, many sources suggested naps.

I tried to take naps, but usually felt worse post-nap. Some days, I would feel horrible after naps. One day I felt so bad after taking a nap that I vowed to never nap again my entire pregnancy.

I have napped once since then, but it was only for about 10 minutes and I felt fine after. My naps during my first trimester were longer…usually about 30-45 minutes and sometimes upwards of an hour. I think the longer naps are what made me feel worse, especially if I took a nap right after eating (which was usually the case since I was basically eating all day).

If you feel like you need a nap, even though the longer ones can be tempting when you feel so tired and fatigued, maybe try shorter ones first.

When I took long naps, they hindered my sleep quality and duration that night which contributed to more tiredness the next day, only prolonging the fatigue.

For the majority of my pregnancy thus far, I have felt the best skipping naps and going to sleep earlier that night if I have to. And I seem to do okay with the occasional short nap if my body needs it.

So when it comes to napping, I recommend skipping if you can, but if you need one, keep them short.

During the beginning of my first trimester, I tried – so hard – to hold on to my pre-pregnancy diet. The more I held on, the worse I felt. When I finally let it go and accepted that my pregnant body needed something else, I felt a big release. This release felt really, really good.

I talked to my midwife, doula, and other women about this. Something I kept hearing was… “pregnancy and labor are all about surrender.”

I dove into this concept and started to apply it to my own pregnancy. I began to see how shockingly true it was.

When I look back on my entire pregnancy thus far (including my first trimester), it feels like something has been guiding me. Like I’m supposed to be walking a certain path, and if I’m not on that path, I’m met with physical discomfort and resistance.

This path I speak of almost feels predetermined.

The farther I continue down the old path that’s not working, the more resistance I feel in my body. When the resistance starts to build, I shut off, become tired, anxious, depressed, and just generally feel unwell. One could argue these manifestations and fluctuations are just “pregnancy symptoms.”

The mood changes, emotional reactions, hemorrhoids, dizzy spells, flashbacks to childhood trauma, aching body, crying spells, nausea, and leg cramps…are we as pregnant women supposed to just endure all of these things?

Maybe, but I’m not so sure.

Many people will tell you these things are just “part of pregnancy.” This is obviously true because these things are part of pregnancy, but not many people will tell you how you can work with these things.

When I leaned into these discomforts, I realized they were trying to tell me something. Once I learned whatever thing I was supposed to learn, I would experience a release. After the release, the symptoms/feelings almost always resolved. Sometimes they came back, but then I repeated the process and almost always found the same result.

Some examples (you’ve probably seen a number of these throughout this post):

• altering my diet to meet my body’s changing needs
• giving up spicy food
• allowing myself to move slowly
• listening to (and trying to understand) others instead of treating myself like a victim
• giving up naps
• giving up intense workouts
• drinking salted water instead of unsalted water
• adding raw milk to my diet
• surrendering worry about my baby’s health
• surrendering worry about things I can’t control
• taking magnesium every night religiously
• pampering myself
• meditating daily
• doing yoga
• speaking truthfully instead of harboring resentment toward others

One example is my relationship with my mom. Ever since I found out I am having a girl, “mom issues” surfaced for me. I chronically felt resistance toward my mom. When she would call, I would tighten. Certain things she said would annoy me, then I’d guilt trip myself for feeling that way. I was shocked at (and hated) some of the decisions she made for me when I was little. When she came to town to visit, I’d get nervous. I felt uncomfortable when she rubbed my belly. Sometime I’d shut off around her. It was a mosh pit of confusing emotions and behaviors. I felt these things as powerful sensations in my body, and they seemed to get worse over time…a cue that I needed to let go of/learn something.

I saw another blogger talk about a book – Spirit Babies – just once. Ever since then, for some reason, the book remained in my head.

My mom came into town recently. As I anticipated her visit, I felt the things I described above.

A few days before I was supposed to see her, I was reading another book. The book felt painfully hard to read. It was so boring to the point where I had to put it down. I kept hearing myself say “I don’t want to read this book, I really want to read Spirit Babies instead.”

I ordered it, read it, and cried throughout almost the entire thing. The book changed how I see life, my parents, and the people in my life, but mostly…how I see my mom.

Through the processing of the words and the shedding of the tears, I let go of something. Perhaps an old way that I looked at life.

My psyche rearranged. I suddenly felt like I understood my mom. I felt reborn, refreshed, and lighter.

And that trip was one of the best visits I ever had with my mom. We left each other hugging and both in tears. The resistance I felt toward her significantly diminished and my body felt better and lighter.

Ever since I’ve been pregnant, I feel forced to address things. If I don’t, it feels like I’m being divinely punished.

Pre-pregnancy, I could bottle things away much easier. These days, not so much.

The process appears as the same cycle over and over again. It starts with emotional or physical discomfort. Then..

• brainstorming and exploring what the sensation or feeling is trying to tell me,
• many iterations of different actions (aka trial and error), and
• a huge release once I’ve learned the lesson I’m supposed to learn.

Resistance has been my guide. It lets me know when I need to enter this cycle. When I feel it, I tap in to see what it’s trying to tell me that I need to release.

Maybe it’s a narrative. Maybe it’s a behavior. Maybe its a food. Maybe it’s a perspective. Maybe it’s something I need to add. Maybe it’s just allowing whatever it is to be.

This is not to say that it’s realistic to expect to clear 100% of your resistance and have a symptom-free pregnancy.

For instance, sometimes I randomly feel super weird. Maybe a little off or different. I try not to fight it. Instead, I chalk it up to pregnancy. Maybe it’s hormones. Or maybe it’s something else. There’s not always an obvious answer for everything.

Pregnancy has been one of the most beautiful experiences of my life so far. It certainly hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, but I think that’s kind of the point.

Ah, what will motherhood bring? 🙂

If any of the stuff I mentioned in this section interests you, check out the below books. I really enjoyed them.

• Labor Like a Goddess (plus the male companion book Become a God so She Can Labor Like a Goddess; I’m making my husband read this!)
• Birthing from Within
• Spirit Babies

Final thoughts

I hope you found some of these thoughts, reflections, and suggestions useful.

When I was deep in the feels of my first trimester, I thought it would never end.

Now I’m here in my third trimester, feeling great, and getting ready to give birth in just a few months!

Update: I had my baby! Read my full birth story here or check out the pregnancy section on my website for more pregnancy, birth, and postpartum resources.

When you feel stuck and like things will never change, have hope that they will. Nothing is forever.

Best of luck to you with your pregnancy and motherhood.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to me at asheatsgood@gmail.com.

For more animal-based pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and motherhood resources, check out my Pregnancy hub.