Your Body This Month
From your tired and anxious mind to your busy bladder, all of your body's systems may seem to be in overdrive during these early days of pregnancy. The first thing you will notice is the absence of your monthly menstrual period — in many cases, this is what tipped you off to your pregnancy in the first place. Your embryo is secreting the human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) hormone into your system. In addition to interrupting menstruation, hCG signals the ovaries to produce the hormone progesterone until week 8 of pregnancy, when the placenta takes over production.
Your Body Changes
At this point in your pregnancy, you might not notice any significant changes in shape and size. Although you aren't menstruating, you feel slightly bloated, and your waistband may begin to feel a bit snug. Your breasts may also start to increase in size, and the areolas around your nipples may enlarge and darken. No period? Bigger breasts? This baby is doing wonders for you already! Now for the cloud around that silver lining — fuller breasts are often more tender in pregnancy (although a supportive sports bra can help).
Some women experience minor vaginal blood flow, called spotting, as the embryo implants itself into the uterine wall. Because of the timing — one week to ten days after ovulation — it's often mistaken for the beginning of the menstrual period. The spotting, which usually lasts only a day or two, is pink to brown and may be accompanied by minor cramps.
You may also experience increased vaginal secretions similar to those you get premenstrually, another hormonal side effect. These typically last throughout pregnancy and may actually worsen in the third trimester, so stock up on panty liners now. Normal vaginal secretions in pregnancy are clear to white in color, mucus-like, and both odor and pain free. If you experience discharge that is thick, foul-smelling, off-color, or accompanied by itching, blood, or pain, contact your health care provider immediately to rule out infection or other problems.
What You Feel Like
Building a baby is hard work, and even though it's early in the process, it isn't unusual to feel tired and rundown right now. If at all possible, try to grab a nap during the day. If that isn't feasible due to a full-time job or other young children at home, make an early bedtime a priority. Although it may run contrary to your nature to be sleeping away the daylight hours when you could be accomplishing one of the seventy-five things on your to-do list, thinking of it as a naptime for baby might help. Once you start down the long road of sleepless nights that new motherhood brings, you'll be longing for the days of early bedtimes and frequent naps!
You may also find yourself spending more and more time in the bathroom. You are urinating more frequently due to high levels of progesterone, which relaxes your bladder muscles. Unfortunately, frequent urination is one symptom that will likely remain with you throughout pregnancy as your baby grows and the uterus exerts more and more pressure on your bladder. And although constipation typically doesn't become a common pregnancy complaint for several months yet, if you're taking iron supplements you may be experiencing problems now. (For more on easing constipation, see Chapter 6.)
Your cardiovascular system is undergoing big changes right now as it adjusts to meet baby's growing demand for the oxygen and nutrients your blood is carrying. Circulating pregnancy hormones dilate (or expand) your blood vessels to accommodate an eventual 50 percent increase in blood volume. Your cardiac output, a measure of how hard your heart is working to pump blood, increases by 30 to 50 percent, whereas your blood pressure drops. This is why you may find yourself feeling faint. If you feel dizzy or lightheaded, sit or lie down on your side as soon as possible. Try not to lie flat on your back, particularly later in pregnancy, since the pressure your uterus places on both the aorta and the inferior vena cava (two of the large blood vessels that help keep oxygen circulating to you and baby) will actually make the dizziness worse.
If episodes of fainting or dizziness persist or are accompanied by abdominal pain or bleeding, contact your health care provider immediately. They could be symptoms of ectopic (or tubal) pregnancy, a potentially fatal condition in which implantation occurs outside the endometrial lining of the uterus (for example, in the fallopian tubes). (See Appendix A for more on ectopic pregnancy.)
And then there's the most notorious of all pregnancy symptoms — morning sickness. Referred to by clinicians as nausea and vomiting of pregnancy (or NVP), up to 80 percent of women experience one or both of these symptoms at some point in their pregnancy. As you may know all too well by now, the more accurate term is morning, noon, and night sickness; NVP can happen at any time and strikes with varying intensity. Many women find that their stomach starts to settle as the first trimester draws to a close (anywhere from week 12 to 16), but for others the queasiness persists throughout the entire pregnancy. NVP and relief strategies are covered in depth later in this chapter.
