This Is How Much Water You Should Drink During Your First Trimester, According To Science

I am really bad at drinking water. I am by default a tea drinker, and I can go through several large glasses of iced tea in a day. But water? What's that? When I was pregnant, I was mostly better, but I was like a lot of moms-to-be worrying about their water intake, especially in early pregnancy. But, how much water should you drink during your first trimester? Honestly, I had to set an alert on my phone just to remind me to do it.

According to The Mayo Clinic, it's crucial that pregnant women get enough water to drink because of the increase in fluid that happens in your body when you're pregnant, even if it does feel like you're just a peeing machine. (Because you absolutely will feel like a peeing machine.) However, the effects of dehydration are amplified during pregnancy, according to the Mayo Clinic, and can become quite dangerous. It can even cause preterm labor, noted the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews medical library.

How much water is enough though? I know that every fitness app I have tracks water for me. Heck, even my meditation app tells me to drink water. But is it that big of a difference between when you're not pregnant and when you are? Is eight glasses enough? Do you need more? How much water should you drink during pregnancy? (I probably did not drink enough.)

According to the Journal of Perinatal Education, women who are pregnant should be consuming one milliliter of water per calorie of food. That means that if you're meant to be consuming 2300 calories per day (according to the journal, this is based on a 2,000 calorie diet plus 300 additional calories to make that baby), you should be drinking 2300 milliliters of water per day — about 10 glasses.

Good news, though. The Mayo Clinic suggested that drinks like La Croix, and foods like watermelon can count towards the goal as well. It's recommended that you increase your water intake if you're doing an especially vigorous workout, or if it's rather hot outside. Personally, I'm a huge, huge La Croix strawberry melon fan, even if it is terrible for my teeth. I mean, it can't be as bad for me as all those jellybeans I ate when I was pregnant, right? (Buttered popcorn flavor forever.)

In the end, it's all about making sure you have enough fluid volume in your body to support a healthy pregnancy, and if you have to set an alert on your phone to yell at you every so often to drink a glass of water, so be it. It's only temporary — a few more months and you can go back to making the unhealthy choice to live on coffee, tea, and the salty tears of your enemies. (But it might be best to keep up the water habit.)