Unmistakable signs of pregnancy
Hormonal changes accompanying pregnancy can bring about early and characteristic symptoms. Taken separately, such signs may not mean much, but put together may well be a first indication that you are indeed pregnant.
Sign 1: missed period
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Long before a baby bump appears, many women perceive the first signs of pregnancy. The most common sign, which almost always gets women wondering if they’re pregnant, is delay in menstruation. However, many women have irregular menstrual cycles, sometimes periods of amenorrhoea (cessation of a menstrual period), thus rendering this sign fairly unreliable in early pregnancy. Furthermore, bleeding can occur during the first few months of pregnancy and confuse you, though it’s usually less abundant than your regular period.
Sign 2: heavy and tender breasts
A range of other typical symptoms can show up in early pregnancy, all of them related to enhanced secretion of sexual hormones. Your breasts swell, your nipples become swollen and darker in colour. Sometimes, the pigmented skin round each nipple, the areola, will develop small raised glands known as Montgomery’s tubercles. These breast changes often occur very early on in pregnancy.
Sign 3: changes in taste and digestion
Many pregnant women’s tastes change without causing digestive problems. They may suddenly stop eating foods they used to enjoy and crave other foods. Sometimes, they are utterly disgusted by things such as wine or cigarettes.
Typical signs of this change in taste can include nausea or morning sickness, which usually occur near the end of the first pregnancy month. According to some estimates, up to half of pregnant women experience some form of morning sickness, while actual vomiting is a rarer symptom. Increased salivation and enhanced sense of smell often go hand in hand, and it’s often odours that bring on nausea.
Many women also report feeling bloated and having constipation in the early days of pregancy.
Sign 4: overwhelming tiredness
You usually go to bed late at night, but now you can’t seem to keep your eyes open whenever you sit down for a minute after dinner. Drowsiness, or even an irrepressible need to sleep throughout the day, is commonly experienced by women in early pregnancy. This is due to the sedative effect of the hormone progesterone. Oddly, despite all this tiredness, nighttime sleep may be disrupted.
Signs of pregnancy are so variable from one woman to the next that it would be absurd to base pregnancy diagnosis on only these signs. This is all the more important, as many women exhibit none of these symptoms. However, the development of one or several pregnancy symptoms shouldn’t go unheeded. Test for pregnancy as soon as you can and you’ll know for sure.
Copyright © 2009 Doctissimo
Posted 21.12.2010
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