Early Pregnancy Symptoms

I'm going to write about the symptoms I felt when I first got pregnant. I better do this now, as I think I could be forgetting.

The days right after ovulation, I did not feel a thing. When I went on-line to check what I should look out for, women swore they felt implantation (when fertilized egg implants itself somewhere in the uterus). This should happen 6-10 days after you ovulate. Conception occurs a soon as you ovulate since sperm is waiting for egg, but then it (the teeny-tiny cell) just floats down to your uterus, which takes several days. I did not feel a thing, and I believe many, many women don't either. People think they shouldn't do anything like exercise or be active or even eat or drink anything unhealthy (I will admit, I was one of those people) because they think it will interfere with implantation. I now say and believe it can't be true. How do super-duper athletes get pregnant then? How do super-duper UNhealthy women get pregnant?

After implantation occurs, some women experience "implantation bleeding." That didn't happen to me either. I do believe that the bleeding happens more often than actually feeling implantation b/c some women think it's their period that has arrived. What I think is so crazy about getting pregnant, is that the symptoms are so, so, so similar to getting your period. You will see that women will say they totally thought that their period was coming, when in reality they were pregnant. Or vise-versa, they think they are pregnant and hello, there's Aunt Flo.

My first symptom was that I didn't get my period. I did test the day before I was supposed to get it, but it was true confirmation when I didn't get it. By the way, my cycles were about 26-32 days long. It was hard to monitor ovulation with such a variety. I probably should have used ovulation kits earlier, but didn't want to take it that seriously at that point.

About a week later, I started to feel early, and I mean early symptoms. If you're in-tune with your body, it's easier to realize what's happening. My 2nd and 3rd symptoms were nausea and headaches. I never really had headaches before I was pregnant, but I get them now. The first headache was awful. Probably a migraine. It lasted about 2 days. The nausea was here and there. I didn't feel anything else until the not-so-subtle nausea kicked into high gear along with the exhaustion, at about 7 weeks. This is when I started to feel miserable.

I was feeling sick constantly, tired like you wouldn't believe, and super emotional. My boobs started to hurt too, but they weren't hurting like I was getting my period. The nipples hurt badly, like needles were going in them. When I got cold, they would get hard and hurt like crazy. I thought it would feel like when my period was coming, but it wasn't. It was very different for me. I felt these symptoms primarily from 7-13 weeks. I thought they would never end....but they did!

I want to add that I didn't feel any discomfort in the abdominal area. Some women experience cramping, like period-cramping, or they think they feel a tugging feeling. I didn't feel a thing, which made it really weird for me. I thought that if I was growing something in the area that I for sure would feel some stretching, but I didn't at all. It just made it hard for me to believe that a fetus was growing inside of me.

So the "bad" symptoms went away. I felt and still feel like a new woman. I didn't have to take naps and my energy was back in full blast. IT was amazing. From 13-18 weeks, which is now, I've felt really good. Still kinda worried here and there, but not like before. What I'm waiting for now is a for my belly to expand. It sure does after a eat a whole bunch, but it doesn't look like a pregnant belly. I absolutely feel and look chubbier.

What I have felt is a bit of "fluttering." Now, you'll never know what this is really like until it happens to you. For some women it feels like gas or butterflies. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's definitely close to fluttering. Like little tiny tapping near my umbilical cord. It happens so quickly too, which is why I think it's also called "quickening." This has only happened a hand-full of times, but it's cool. It's kind of strange too....

I want to end with saying that it so easy to obsess with what you're going to feel in early pregnancy. And it's so easy for me to say not to. There are many times where I don't feel pregnant and I think, gosh, it's probably true when women or girls say "I didn't know I was pregnant." I kind of have to believe that now. I am convinced that pregnancy is all about waiting, being patient, letting it take it's own course. I think the best thing to do is learn what is actually happening. Learn how the female body functions and how it is you get pregnant and how it is that your body changes. There will be differences, but there will be similarities too and it just all depends on how it affects you.