Early signs of pregnancy | Mumsnet
so you think you might be pregnant it's a bit of a guessing game until you know for sure I'm Claire and I'm a midwife and today I'm gonna be talking through some of the early signs of pregnancy from the ones that you may know already so the ones perhaps you didn't already know obviously if you think you're pregnant it's really important to either go to your GP or your Midwife at your GP surgery it's clearly better to know as soon as possible fair warning this is gonna get a little bit graphic with a lot of bodily functions so let's start with the most obvious ones missing a period we mean you have a regular menstrual cycle or miss a period around about four weeks after their last one and that means that there'll be about four weeks pregnant another really obvious one is nausea it's a bit of a misnomer to call it morning sickness because it's more like all-day sickness so professionals tend to call it pregnancy sickness The Hollywood loved to use this one where the woman gets out of bed in the morning and brushes straight to the loo if only it was that simple really what's happening is the hormone HCG is growing in your system and this causes you to feel sick this starts around about six weeks of pregnancy and usually dies down around about the thirteenth week but for some unlucky people it goes all the way through so one of the ones that you might not have heard of is implantation that is when you get a short sharp pain in your lower abdomen basically the pain that you're feeling is the fertilized egg implanting in the wall of your womb it feels a bit like a pinching sensation but not everybody gets that symptom the next one is connected to the last one implantation bleeding happens for some women so this bleeding isn't having fresh red bleeding but some women have like a brown loss or a pinky loss when they wipe after the toilet this is the egg implanting in the wall of the uterus the bit of the wall of the uterus that is implanted into then comes away and is what you have is the bleeding usually it is really really light leading but some women do mistake this for the start of a period so the next one is one of the most common symptoms of the more extreme tiredness this starts around about when you've missed your period and goes all the way up to 13 weeks this isn't a tiredness like I want to go to bed half an hour earlier timeless this is all-consuming absolutely crashing on the sofa in the end of the day tiredness this is due to your hormones when you're pregnant everything is all over the place and it means that you just feel all out of whack the next symptom it's aw boobs this is one of the most common symptoms as well they may feel really heavy they might feel really sore very tender some people describe it as a tingling sensation yeah others say that it's like a pinching sensation behind the nipples your body and your boobs are getting ready to feed that baby when the baby arrives another symptom is having backache it's another really common symptom that's mistaken for the start of your period as well because some people do get back ache is period pain it's the hormone relaxing going through your system and making every muscle relax just a little bit which is enough to make you back hurt like hell it is another one that's a little bit on the graphic side cervical mucus yeah we need to talk about it basically when you're pregnant at the start you get lots of thin sticky cervical mucus however as it goes forward the progesterone in your body builds up and makes it much thicker and stickier delightful cervical mucus can start at any point obviously your hormones are always produced in discharge however you might notice this symptom quite soon after your missed period the discharge is going to continue all the way through your pregnancy but it's just gonna change in the way that it looks as time goes on the next one is a heightened sense of smell it basically means that you've got the snout of a dog you can smell something at 50 paces usually the biggest culprits are coffee and tobacco a lot of women describe having a funny taste in their mouth in early pregnancy like a metallicky sort of taste and this is called dysgeusia however this is usually down to your progesterone and again coming back to give you a kick in the bun a lot of women describe their skin being different whilst they're pregnant so in the earliest stages you might notice that your skin goes really bad and you're full of pimples or you might find that it actually gets a lot better people tend to go one way or the other however it is down to the hormones once again and it usually passes around about sweet mouth dizziness is also really common in early pregnancy once again the progesterone is coming in and giving you a kick basically it dilates your blood vessels which mean that your blood pressure drops it makes you feel light-headed and dizzy some women describe having hot flushes in pregnancy this one is normally linked to the menopause however some women get them in the early stages around about four to six weeks it's not very common but if you do get it don't panic and the final one is one that happens very occasionally some women get an insatiable thirst that's normal and it's nothing to worry about however if you are suffering from it make sure you've got our bottle of water to hand because you're gonna need it so if you've probably guessed a lot of these symptoms are like the start of your period so if you are unsure buy a pregnancy test or go and see your GP Mumsnet has its own pregnancy calendar as well so you can log on and cross-reference your symptoms according to when your last period was if you are pregnant come back and check in with Mumsnet there is loads and loads of content for every part of your pregnancy including a fantastic support network if you liked this video feel free to subscribe and give us a thumbs up and any questions pop them in the comments below
