Hey! Are you pregnant? Well, pregnancy tests and ultrasounds can clarify your doubt if you’re expecting a baby or not. But before you even miss your menstruation, there are a few early signs and symptoms of pregnancy you can look out for to get a heads-up for your conception.
Though every woman is different, so are their experiences of pregnancy. Not every woman has the same signs/symptoms or even the same symptoms from one pregnancy to the next. This is also because the early signs of pregnancy often imitate the symptoms you might experience right before and during menstruation, confusing you to suspect if you’re pregnant.
So, here’s what you should know about these common early signs of pregnancy and why they occur.
- Missed period- A missed period is one early pregnancy sign all conceiving moms experience! However, this can be misleading in a few cases if you have an irregular menstrual cycle. Some women also have an unusually short or light period after they already impregnate, often called implantation bleeding. It can usually be mistaken for your last menstrual period. So at first, you may not suspect a missed period.
- Tender, swollen breasts- You might experience tender, swollen breasts, and darkening, bumpy areolas early in pregnancy hormonal changes since it’s part of your body’s preparation for the milk-making to come. The breast pain will ease up after a few weeks as your body adjusts to hormonal changes.
- Morning sickness or Nausea-That queasy feeling known as morning sickness, which can strike at any time of the day, often begins one month or approx 6 weeks after you become pregnant. However, it can vary as some women feel nausea earlier and some never experience it.
- Frequent urination- After 2 to 3 weeks of conception, you might find yourself urinating frequently. This is due to the pregnancy hormone hCG in which the amount of blood in your body increases, causing your kidneys to more efficiently rid your body of extra fluid. Your growing uterus also put some pressure on your bladder, leaving less storage space for urine and making you urinate more frequently.
- Fatigue- During early pregnancy, levels of the hormone progesterone soar making you feel sleepy. Also after you become pregnant, your excessive amount of energy is used to build a placenta. All that can cause pregnancy fatigue shortly after you conceive.
- Mood Swings- The pregnancy-related hormones in your body can make you unusually emotional and weepy. Approx after 4 weeks into your pregnancy, you may feel moodiness similar to that of PMS; later in the first trimester and often throughout the rest of pregnancy, you could be up one minute and anxious or down the next.
- Bloating- Hard to differentiate from pre-period bloat, hormonal changes during early pregnancy can cause you to feel bloated as the hormone progesterone slows down digestion for the food nutrients to reach your baby and can also lead to Constipation.
- Food aversions- Early pregnancy makes certain mild odors strong and unappealing to you and your sense of taste might change. Like most other symptoms of pregnancy, these food preferences can be chalked up to hormonal changes.
- Nasal congestion- Increasing hormone levels and blood production in your body can cause the mucous membranes in your nose to swell, dry out, and bleed easily. This might cause you to have a stuffy or runny nose.
Lakshika Thakur is a freelance content writer with femsay.com. She can be found on Instagram.