THE BEGINNING OF PREGNANCY

THE BEGINNING OF PREGNANCY


You feel sick but happy. You're tired but excited about the future. Your body is changing and your moods are volatile. You are pregnant. Are you ready? Learn about what's happening to you and your baby at the Pregnancy Learning Center. From preparing to get pregnant and preventing pregnancy, to knowing what to expect during pregnancy through delivery, the Learning Center offers a wealth of multimedia information to help guide you through this special time [1].

Pregnancy (latin "graviditas") is the carrying of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, inside the uterus of a female. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or triplets. Human pregnancy is the most studied of all mammalian pregnancies.

One scientific term for the state of pregnancy is gravid, and a pregnant female is sometimes referred to as a gravida. Neither word is used in common speech. Similarly, the term "parity" (abbreviated as "para") is used for the number of previous successful live births. Medically, a woman who has never been pregnant is referred to as a "nulligravida", a woman who is (or has been only) pregnant for the first time as a "primigravida", and a woman in subsequent pregnancies as a multigravida or "multiparous". Hence, during a second pregnancy a woman would be described as "gravida 2, para 1" and upon live delivery as "gravida 2, para 2". An in-progress pregnancy, as well as abortions, miscarriages, or stillbirths account for parity values being less than the gravida number, whereas a multiple birth will increase the parity value. Women who have never carried a pregnancy achieving more than 20 weeks of gestation age are referred to as "nulliparous". The medical term for a woman who is pregnant for the first time is primigravida [2].

Pregnancy symptoms

If you're like everyone else you're trying to figure out what the signs of pregnancy or pregnancy symptoms are and how likely they are to mean that you are pregnant. You can ask other people, you can worry in silence, but the best thing is to read through the categories and add up the signs. The more you have the more likely you are to be pregnant [3]. Top ten signs you might be pregnant [4], see in table below.


The beginning of pregnancy may be detected in a number of different ways, either by a pregnant woman without medical testing, or by using medical tests with or without the assistance of a medical professional. Most pregnant women experience a number of symptoms, which can signify pregnancy.

A number of early medical signs are associated with pregnancy. These signs typically appear, if at all, within the first few weeks after conception. Although not all of these signs are universally present, nor are all of them diagnostic by themselves, taken together they make a presumptive diagnosis of pregnancy.

These signs include the presence of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in the blood and urine, missed menstrual period, implantation bleeding that occurs at implantation of the embryo in the uterus during the third or fourth week after last menstrual period, increased basal body temperature sustained for over 2 weeks after ovulation, Chadwick's sign (darkening of the cervix, vagina, and vulva), Goodell's sign (softening of the vaginal portion of the cervix), Hegar's sign (softening of the uterus isthmus), and pigmentation of linea alba - Linea nigra, (darkening of the skin in a midline of the abdomen, caused by hyperpigmentation resulting from hormonal changes, usually appearing around the middle of pregnancy).