An early sign of pregnancy is fatigue, feeling exhausted. Pregnancy fatigue can start around the same time that you would take a pregnancy test, very early in pregnancy. Fatigue is a side effect of all the physical changes your body is experiencing, and due to the dramatic rise in hormone levels. Many women feel constantly tired in early pregnancy. Some women feel tired throughout pregnancy. Pregnancy fatigue makes some women feel like they could fall asleep all the time. It can seriously impair your life. Remember fatigue is nature’s way of telling you to get more rest.

What causes fatigue?

•  Fatigue during pregnancy is due to all the physical changes your body is experiencing. For all these preps your body will consume more energy and your metabolism will increase. This makes you feel fatigued.

•  In addition to the physical changes that your body is going through there is a dramatic rise in hormone levels to assist in fetal growth. Rising progesterone levels are responsible for much of the fatigue and other symptoms associated with pregnancy.

•  If you are experiencing nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy, that can drain you of all your energy.

•  If you experience frequent urination in early pregnancy then it’s hard to get a good night’s sleep, if you’re getting up frequently to use the bathroom. This can cause fatigue.

•  Fatigue and weakness are symptoms of iron-deficiency anemia, which is common in pregnancy. You may not have any symptoms, if you’re mildly anemic. The disease often goes unrecognized for some time as it tends to develop slowly and adaptation occurs. Hence, your practitioner will test your blood for this condition at your first prenatal visit and again in your late second trimester or early third trimester.

•  If you are feeling anxious about your pregnancy, anxiousness alone is enough to make you feel fatigued. So resting your mind is as important as resting your body. The emotional stresses associated with pregnancy can be huge. The to-be-mother has to deal with the anxiety that pregnancy brings in about motherhood and her ability to cope with labour etc, in addition to the hormonal and physical changes happening in the body.

•  Poor diet can cause fatigue, if you aren’t getting enough nutrients or are not eating enough.

How long will this feeling last?

Early pregnancy:

Fatigue during pregnancy is something that many women do not really expect until the end of the last trimester. But pregnancy fatigue can be an early pregnancy symptom. During the first trimester, you’re likely to feel overwhelming fatigue. The extreme tiredness will last for most of the first trimester. These are the months when the female body is making the most changes. All the physical and hormone changes your body is experiencing causes fatigue.

Second trimester:

Fatigue may start clearing up by the beginning of the second trimester around 12th to 14th week. You may feel more active and more energetic and start to feel like your old self during your second trimester. This is because the growth and changes swifts from mom’s body to baby’s body during the second trimester.

The last trimester:

The vast majority of pregnant women will feel very tired in the last trimester. For some women it may not be as severe as in early pregnancy. Especially, towards the end of pregnancy most to-be-mums tend to feel the strain. At this point you’ll be carrying more weight and may be having trouble sleeping well for a variety of reasons, including backache, heartburn, leg cramps or restless legs syndrome, the baby moving around, and especially the need to pee frequently. All these lead to fatigue.

How to cope with fatigue during pregnancy?

There are a couple of things that you can to do to combat the extreme fatigue and tiredness:

•  Take in nutritious food

Increase your energy levels by sticking to a healthy diet. Make sure you’re eating right. You need about 300 extra calories every day as you require more energy during pregnancy. Snack on healthy foods and fill this additional requirement with nutritious foods instead of junk food that is full of fat and sugar. A healthy diet made up of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, skim milk, and lean meats can be energizing. Try to eat five to six small, healthy meals a day to keep your body fueled.

•  Listen to your body.

All the physical changes that your body is going through during your first trimester: your body creating the placenta and storing vital hormones to assist in fetal growth and your baby’s growth will consume more energy. This can make you feel very tired, so if you are feeling tired just go to sleep. Heed your body’s signals.

•  Take a short nap during the day.

Take naps and rest, lack of sleep can make you tired. Even a 15-minute catnap can make all the difference. A siesta in the afternoon will help to recharge your batteries.

•  Go to bed earlier than usual at night and sleep well.

Sleep for at least 8 hours a night. The baby’s growth takes quite a toll on your body and the revitalization of sleep is about more than feeling refreshed. It is about rebuilding the body’s defenses and core structures.

•  Get checked for anemia.

Fatigue and weakness are symptoms of iron-deficiency anemia, get yourself checked for this condition. Taking medication for anemia will ease your condition.

•  Try to adjust your schedule.

Cut out unnecessary social commitments and let the housework slide. If you work outside the home, see if you can cut back on your hours or arrange to take work home over the weekend so you can cut out early once in a while. If you’re a stay-at-home mom, give yourself a break now and then so you can catch up on your sleep. If your kids are not letting you get enough rest, leave your children with someone else.

•  Stay hydrated

Keep yourself well hydrated and make sure you’re drinking plenty of water. If frequent urination is keeping you up at night, try cutting back your fluid intake a few hours before bedtime and make up for it during the day.

•  Avoid caffeine

They are digested quickly and leave you feeling empty.

•  Get some moderate exercise every day.

You may feel like you barely have the energy to walk, let alone exercise. But moderate activity, such as a short walk, can actually make you feel better. Excercising may sound counterproductive, but exercise feeds the body energy. Tiredness during pregnancy can be easily flipped to energy during pregnancy with the addition of a walk every morning or every evening after dinner.So unless your caregiver has advised you otherwise, make exercise part of your daily routine.

Pregnancy Symptom: Frequent Urination

Frequent urination is an early sign of pregnancy. Many women notice the increased need to pee, even before the other classic pregnancy signs. A pregnant women typically start noticing the need to urinate more frequently anywhere from six to eight weeks into pregnancy. While some women experience less urgency during their second trimester, others continue to feel the urge to urinate more frequently throughout their pregnancy.

What Causes Frequent Urination?

As you go through your pregnancy, the reason that’s behind frequent urination is different at different stages. Read on to find out what causes frequent urination.

•  Early in pregnancy

Frequent urination starts in early pregnancy. Right after conception a woman’s body begins to produce pregnancy hormones that promote and sustain the pregnancy. Pregnancy also causes the volume of blood in a woman’s body to increase. The extra blood and fluid used in pregnancy is excreted through your kidneys. That means the rate at which your kidneys produce urine increases, this increases your need to pee.

•  First trimester frequent urination

At the beginning of your pregnancy, your uterus is inside your pelvis. But towards the end of your first trimester, at around 12 weeks, your uterus expands enough to rise up into your abdominal cavity. Your enlarging uterus may compress your bladder, which both decreases its capacity and thus, increases your need to urinate frequently.

•  Second trimester frequent urination

Few women will have a break from the frequent urge to pee during second trimester.

•  Third trimester frequent urination

The reason behind frequent trips to the bathroom in the third trimester is pressure from the uterus on the bladder. As your pregnancy progresses the baby will grow large and heavy, put pressure on your bladder, causing you to feel the urge to go to the loo more often even if your bladder is not full.

Towards the end of pregnancy as your baby drops into the pelvis in preparation for delivery, this again exerts more pressure on your bladder. The added pressure prevents the bladder from filling completely and resulting in frequent trips to the bathroom.

•  Post partum urination

For the first few days after your baby is born you will still be using the bathroom more frequently. Your body is removing all the extra fluid that was needed for pregnancy. After the volume of fluid has returned to normal, you will need to use the bathroom less.

Waking up at night

Pregnant women need to use the bathroom often at night, even if they are careful to not drink large amounts of fluids before they go to sleep. The reason for this is the fluid that collects in the legs during the day has a chance to redistribute and be eliminated from your system via your bladder.

Hence, frequent urination is usually a whole pregnancy symptom. Frequent urination persists throughout pregnancy. From early on in your pregnancy, you may feel you’re spending most of your time in the restroom.

How to deal with frequent urination

You can’t do much about your need to urinate frequently. However, you can reduce the inconvenience it creates by following these:

•  Drink plenty of fluids but not at night

You will need to drink plenty of fluids to keep yourself hydrated during pregnancy. Never cut down on the amount of fluids that you take in to reduce the trips to the bathroom, as you could get dehydrated. Try to drink more during the day and less just before you go to bed so that you aren’t up all night going to the restroom. Cut back on the amount of fluid intake at night and compensate for it by drinking enough during the day.

•  Avoid coffee

You should also consider avoiding drinks that increase your need to urinate, like coffee, tea and other caffeinated drinks. Coffee and tea contain caffeine which is a diuretic. Diuretics increase the flow of urine and may aggravate the situation. So try decreasing the amount of caffeine you consume.

•  When trying to urinate, you can lean forward to make sure that your entire bladder is emptied. Many women find they have to pee again shortly after a visit to the bathroom simply because they were not able to empty their bladder fully. This is more common in the later stages of pregnancy.

•  Before going out for long (or even short) trips, empty your bladder so that you don’t find yourself needing facilities when none are available.

•  Practice kegel exercises

You may leak a bit of urine when you sneeze, cough or laugh if your bladder is full. This is called stress incontinence and will persist throughout your pregnancy. This will most likely go away with the birth of your baby. Kegel exercises can also help with urinary incontinence. While Kegel exercises may not resolve the problem completely it may help reduce the stress incontinence you experience during pregnancy.

Stress incontinence

Women in the third trimester and post partum commonly have stress incontinence. Stress incontinence is when a few drops of urine are released involuntarily when doing activities like laughing, sneezing, coughing; or when lifting heavy objects or exercising.

To reduce stress incontinence:

•  Regularly perform Kegel exercises to strengthen the pelvic muscles
•  Don’t stretch out the bladder by holding urine in when you have the urge to pee
•  Empty your bladder frequently

Kegel exercise

Kegel exercise is a pelvic floor exercise, which consists of contracting and relaxing the muscles that form part of the pelvic floor. It helps strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, referred to as the “Kegel muscles”. Many actions that are controlled by Kegel muscles include “holding in” urine or avoiding defecation.

Several tools exist to help with these exercises. Kegel is a popular prescribed exercise for pregnant women to prepare the pelvic floor for physiological stresses of the later stages of pregnancy and vaginal childbirth. Reproducing these types of muscle actions can yield stronger Kegel muscles and thus help in better “holding in” of urine.

Symptoms to look out for

Frequent urination during pregnancy is common. The increased rate of urination may also be caused by a urinary tract infection, diabetes, increased fluid intake, or tension or stress exerted on the body. But if you feel any discomfort or burning or notice blood during urination, talk to your practitioner. When you’re pregnant, bacteria in your urine are more likely than usual to cause a urinary tract infection.

You may experience the following symptoms if you have developed a urinary tract infection (UTI) or bladder infection – a common bacterial infection that can develop during pregnancy:

•  Burning during urination
•  You frequently need to urinate but aren’t able to pass more than a small amount of fluid.
•  Urgent need to urinate, yet scant amounts of urine
•  Painful urination
•  Only produce a few drops of urine when you try to go
•  Even more frequent urination
•  Fever
•  Abdominal pain, cramping
•  Backache
•  Foul smelling urine

If you experience any of these symptoms in addition to frequent urination talk to your doctor. UTI’s are quite common during pregnancy. It is important to treat urinary tract infections as soon as possible, because untreated infections can develop into serious pregnancy complications such as kidney infections and preterm labor. Fortunately with proper treatment most are cleared up in a few days.

Pregnancy Symptom: Breast Changes

For many women the first pregnancy symptom they experience is changes in their breast tissue. When you get pregnant, one of the earliest and most significant changes that happen in your body are to  your breasts. Your breasts will respond to you being pregnant by changing in preparation for breastfeeding.

Once fertilisation occurs the pregnancy hormones increase in a pregnant woman’s body. Increase in these pregnancy hormones – hCG, progesterone and estrogen are responsible for all the changes that are brought about to your breasts.  Especially large amounts of estrogen and progesterone are responsible for breast changes during pregnancy.

Here are some of the changes that you may experience in your breasts during early pregnancy which are symptoms of pregnancy:

·   Sore and tender breasts

Tender breasts can be the first symptom of pregnancy. During the first month of pregnancy, most women notice that their breasts feel sore and very tender. You may have a slight tenderness when you touch your breasts or you can have the severe pain whenever you wear a bra. For some women this is also a sign of an impending period, so it may go unnoticed.

·   Changes in nipple: Darkening of areola

The nipples and areolae – the circular areas around the nipples grow bigger and may also begin to darken.

·   Swelling of breasts, heavy breasts

Once fertilisation occurs the increase in pregnancy hormones – hCG, progesterone and estrogen within a pregnant woman’s body, increases blood volume in breasts which makes breast swell and heavy. Blood supply to the breasts also increases markedly. You may notice large, bluish blood vessels coursing along your breasts.

·   Enlargement of breasts

The pregnancy hormones cause the glands inside your breasts to grow and branch out, in preparation for milk production and breastfeeding after the baby is born. This makes the breasts large. Even during the first month of pregnancy, most women notice that their breasts grow considerably larger.

 ·   Montgomery’s Tubercules

You may notice small, goose bump or pimple like white raised  areas on the areola of your breast. They are called Montgomery’s tubercules. They usually begin within first six weeks of conception.

·   Leaking of breasts: leaking colostrum

Your breast may give out colostrum even before you may know you are pregnant. It can start at around any time during pregnancy. For some it starts around 3rd week and for some during second or third trimester. You may notice one breast leaks or both breasts leak.

Pregnancy symptom: implantation bleeding, implantation pain

Implantation bleeding is an early sign of pregnancy. Even before you notice that you have missed your period implantation bleeding can be an indication of pregnancy.

What is Implantation Bleeding?

The fertilized egg implants itself into your uterus, by attaching to the uterine lining. When this happens a small amount of blood is discharged. This is called implantation bleeding or spotting. To know more about this pregnancy symptom read on.

Pregnancy happens when the egg released by the ovary is fertilized by a sperm, to form a zygote (fertilized egg). This process happens inside the fallopian tube. The zygote then travels to the uterus from the fallopian tube. As it travels, it divides into a number of cells to form the blastocyst, a ball of cells with an outer covering. Once the blastocyst reaches the uterus, it gets out of the protective outer covering and attaches itself to the inner lining of the uterus which is called the endometrium. Through this attachment, the blastocyst forms links with the mother’s blood vessels, in order to receive oxygen and nutrients which are necessary for its growth into your baby.

As the blastocyst penetrates the endometrium and gets attached to the uterus it may cause a slight amount of bleeding. This blood comes out of the uterus, through the vagina and is called implantation bleeding, which is considered one of the earliest pregnancy signs.

All pregnant women may not experience this bleeding, as it is not necessary for the blastocyst to cause bleeding while implanting itself in the uterine wall. Only one-third of women notice implantation bleeding. Recognizing the signs and symptoms of implantation bleeding and its time of occurrence may help in deciding if your pregnant.

When Does Implantation Bleeding Occur?

Implantation bleeding normally happens just before the expected date of menstruation. Implantation bleeding usually occurs in the third or fourth week from the date of yur last menstrual period. You ovulate any time between 10th to 15th day after your last menstruation, implantation bleeding occurs between six to twelve days after ovulation.

The fertilized egg or zygote take around five to six days to travel from the fallopian tube to the uterus. After reaching the uterus, it gets attached to the endometrium. So, it is said that implantation bleeding occurs within six to twelve days of ovulation.

Signs of Implantation Bleeding

Details about the signs and symptoms of implantation bleeding

The first and foremost sign of implantation bleeding is bleeding itself. The amount of bleeding may vary from one woman to another. The vaginal discharge may be too scanty or spotty in some women, whereas in some others it may be little more heavy. But it won’t be heavy bleeding like your menstruation.

However, in this type of bleeding, the blood will be pinkish or brownish, as it is old blood. As it takes some time for the blood to come out of the uterus. Some women may have black-colored discharge too. And it won’t be bright red.

Implantation bleeding may last for a few hours to one to two days. Generally, implantation bleeding is not associated with any symptoms, but some women may experience minor cramps in the uterus called as implantation pain.

Implantation pain

As the fertilised embryo burrows itself into the wall of the uterus, some women experience mild implantation pain or cramping. Implantation of the embryo into the uterus wall can cause discomfort and pain.

Difference Between Implantation Bleeding and Menstruation

The main difference between implantation bleeding and regular menstruation lies in the nature of vaginal discharge. In regular menstruation, there is heavy bleeding which can last for three days and the menstrual discharge is red in color, but in implantation bleeding, there is no actual bleeding. Implantation bleeding is like spotting, which is pinkish or brownish in color. It does not last for three days, but in some women, intermittent spotting may occur for one or two days. Usually, it is not associated with the symptoms of menstruation like pain, backache, cramps, etc. Implantation bleeding happens before the date of menstruation, 2 to 7 days prior to your menstruation date. It can be mistaken for menstruation, if the dates coincide. You have to wait for one or two days. If the spotting does not transform into heavy bleeding, then it means that it is implantation bleeding.

In some women, signs and symptoms of implantation bleeding will be more pronounced while some may not even notice it. You shouldn’t worry if you don’t notice any of the above mentioned symptoms. And those who experience it should confirm pregnancy with other tests.

So am I pregnant?

Apart from implantation bleeding, the other symptoms of pregnancy include nausea or vomiting, tender and swollen breasts, frequent urination, fatigue, abdominal bloating and increased sensitivity to odors. If such symptoms develop after implantation bleeding, along with a missed period, they may indicate pregnancy. However, confirmation of pregnancy is done with blood and urine tests as well as obstetric ultrasonography.

When to consult a doctor

If implantation bleeding is accompanied with pain, you should consult a gynecologist, as it may be a sign of ectopic pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancy is a complicated condition, where the fertilized ovum gets implanted in any tissue other than the uterine wall. Most ectopic pregnancies occur in the fallopian tubes.

Pregnancy Symptom: Cramping, Uterine Pain

Period like cramps or even pain on one side called as uterine cramping is very common in many women in early pregnancy .

The reason behind this symptom, pain and period like cramps is your uterus growing and enlarging. As the uterus stretches a little to prepare itself for its massive expansion over the next nine months you may experience cramps. This pain is normal  and should be expected in a healthy pregnancy.

In early pregnancy you may also feel heavy in the area of your uterus. Women describe feeling like they were about to start their period any minute.

However, if you experience cramping along with vaginal bleeding, consult your health care provider. You should call your doctor or midwife immediately if you experience increasing or severe pain with your cramping. Although the majority of women who experience bleeding and cramping go on to have perfectly normal pregnancies, sometimes these two symptoms together are associated with miscarriage. Cramping alone, without bleeding, is normal and not a problem.