Pregnant Father

Approximately two weeks after conception or just one after you miss your period, an obstetrician, nurse-midwife, or clinictioner can confirm your pregnancy by testing a sample of your urine and examining you internally. What a pregnancy test is actually measuring is a circulating hormone known as human chorionic gonadotropin or HCG, produced by pregnancy tissues and in both your blood and your urine after conception. In your mother’s day, the urine containing HCG was into a frog or rabbit to uncover a budding pregnancy. doctors have more accurate ways of detecting the level of HCG in your system called irnrnunoassays. However, it is very difficult to detect any pregnancy’ changes in a uterus one day after 3. Not until implantation has occurred at days 6 through 10, and it is only at that time that hormones are being excreted, So at ten to fourteen days, you can begin to pick up changes and detect 3. pregnancy. Home pregnancy kits, which use an immunoassay are available in most pharmacies and may be the fastest route to answer this major life question: Are you pregnant? Follow the package directions carefully. Kits rely on a chemical. When combined with your urine in a little test tube, this chemical will change colors in the presence of HCG

Physical effects

Everyone is different but in the first weeks after conception there are early signs of pregnancy that are quite predictable. Set off the marked shift in hormone levels in your body, some of these symptoms may disappear after the end of your first three months. Meanwhile, if you think you might be pregnant. watch for these changes:

You missed your period. If your menstrual cycle is normally irregular, you are under a lot of stress, or feeling sick. this may not be a dependable signal. It is also possible to have a light, bloody discharge and still be pregnant. Some experts say that up to 22 percent of all expectant women report SOD1E bleeding early on.

Your breasts are sore. Tender, enlarged breasts may even tingle and become extra sensitive to touch.

YOU axe nauseous. Morning sickness. one of the classic signs of pregnancy doesn’t always happen in the morning. You can feel sick at any time of day.

You are exhausted and sleepy. Falling asleep at your desk? Dreaming of an afternoon nap? Ready for bed at 8:00 P.M.? Fatigue is a predictable signal of pregnancy.

You need to urinate frequently.

You feel faint or a little dizzy.

You have an achy, heavy sensation in your pelvis. You’ve become intensely emotional. Emotional instability is not all in your head. so don’t let anyone try to convince you that you are crazy. Hormonal changes are partly to blame.

Your taste buds have changed. Some women suddenly develop a strong distaste tor alcohol, coffee, and cigarette
smoke arid of a metallic sensation in their mouths.

Others begin to crave particular foods.

Other kinds of growth and activity are also taking place during the end of this first month. For example, a third, bubble like shelter must house the embryo, the amnion, and the yolk sac. On one side of the chorion are numerous little villi that grow into your uterus and form intricate webbings of blood vessels, multiplying, criss-crossing, and interlocking constantly to feed the placenta and give the embryo everything it could possibly need, including the umbilical cord. Quietly, the frenzy of this one-month production builds. Cells work frantically. You’ve got a baby in the making.

Take an imaginary look at your embryo near the very end of this fourth week. and you might be amazed at how very specialized the existing three layers of growing cells have become. From the outer layers will come your baby’s nervous system as well as the skin, hair, oil, and sweat glands. Meanwhile, in the middle will form the muscles, bones, kidneys, blood vessels, connective tissues, and even genital glands. Inside. the deepest layer of cells will eventually become important systems such as the digestive, the lungs, and the urinary tract. Early signs of a mouth, face, and throat are in place. Speeding at an incredibly fast pace, the unborn baby’s heart, a V-shaped tube that can be seen beneath the opening for the mouth, contracts, perhaps hesitantly at first, but regularly by the end of the fourth week. Beating 180 times a minute, the heart rate starts off very rapidly and through the pregnancy, it declines to about 140 as the baby’s system becomes more complex. When you are forming small capillaries, those blood vessels impede the blood so the baby can pick up more oxygen and the heart doesn’t have to beat as fast. Pumping blood through the developing systems, this heart may be the clue you are waiting to hear in one of your upcoming doctor’s visits.

Dramatic changes occur almost overnight now. You are officially six weeks pregnant, but your tiny embryo is four weeks along. With no arms visible on days 24, 25, or 26, he or she will produce arm buds within hours and in the speed of just another day. clumps grow into what look like paws, with visible signs of finger growth, too. Leg growth is apparent soon after. Think about it: your body is providing the womb and your baby is growing arms and legs. As Dr. Virginia Apgar stated, “Never again will this human being grow as rapidly or change as much as it has during the first month of prenatal life.” Still tiny, of course, your embryo is 10,000 times bigger than he or she was as a fertilized ovum. For a more tangible guide, imagine an apple seed.

After the first week and up to the eighth week of the product of your conception is called an imagine that your own little embryo has a which looks like a large bulge at the chest front? I’, rudimen- tary brain and spinal cord are also present. Shallow pits onthe sides of the head show where eyes and ears will later grow. In size, picture anywhere from one-quarter inch to one and one-tenth inches long. At this point, you haven’t even missed your period yet. In fact, that rich, spongy lining in your uterus, which served the implantation adventure quite well, is what would have been shed during regular monthly menstruation. Because you have an embryo growing, changing, and manufacturing profound changes in your womb. you miss this monthly event, experiencing one of the first clear signs of pregnancy. The embryo is secreting a hormone, known as human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), into your blood system, which interferes with menstruation. This is the hormone that will appear in your urine on a pregnancy test and alert you to the news of a new life beginning.

By the end of the first real lunar month (four weeks) of growth, some of the rapidly dividing cells inside this little “blister” form the placenta, growing more inroads into your uterine cavity and paving the way for its expanding job of nourishing the unborn baby. Inside, the embryo is lengthening and becoming encapsulated in what appears to be a water-tight balloon sac, called the amnion. Fluids from your own body fill the sac and cushion your baby from all the bumps, lumps, and movement in your busy life. Known as the amniotic fluid, this watery substance keeps a consistent temperature and provides a weightless environment that allows the developing baby to exercise and move around. Next to the embryo another little sac appears. Called the yolk sac, this teeny cluster of cells always floats nearby, consists of tiny blood vessels, and provides the blood for the embryo, which is still too immature to do so for itself.

Implantation, or the point at which the fertilized egg attaches itself to the soft spongy, welcoming lining of your is now ready to occur. You may be somewhere into your second or third week by now and unaware that such a momentous event is taking place, Some women experience a bit of bleeding when this happens. Little “fingers” or villi from the edges of the fertilized egg reach out to touch you, often on the upper. back wall of the womb. Not will this ovum develop into your baby, but a few of its rapidly dividing cells will become the placenta that nourishes your baby and the umbilical cord, too, which connects the to of you. You may also hear this fluid-filled cluster of cells referred to as a blastocyst now.
If you were to try to picture this happening inside your uterus, imagine a blister. “Implantation looks like a translucent blister on the lining of the uterus,” according to Doted physician Virginia Apgar, ‘ret. it’s like no blister experienced in the outside world. As hollow’ cluster of new cells burrows its way into the the uterus, pushing aside some of the maternal cells end destroying others, tapping into the maternal blood vessels and using maternal blood and cell bits for nourishment.” One of the more amazing aspects of this process is that your own body doesn’t reject such an invasion, see it as foreign, or try to destroy the little morula, now perhaps the size of the top of a pin. Although your unborn tissues may be very different from yams, your body’s immune doesn’t treat them as different. Your seems to undergo a dramatic attitude adjustment, accepting the “new kid on the block” peacefully. A bacterial or viral invasion would be a different story indeed. Such peace would never be possible if you weren’t pregnant.

Fertilization occurs when the sperm enters the egg. loses its tail, and its head begins to swell. (Swelled head? Right! Sounds like the little guy is proud of his accomplishment!) As this union takes place, a single cell is formed. From this tiny cell, your baby will grow. Although timing the start of a pregnancy is imprecise science. some couples have good hunches about when this new life began based on their sex lives together. Other couples. who have been receiving outside medical intervention for fertility problems, may also have an exact date of fertilization.
Only a few hours after penetration, the fertilized egg, sometimes called a zygote, travels down the fallopian tube toward its destination in the uterus, or womb. It will take six days to reach the uterus and eight to ten days for implantation. As it does so, this cell is dividing, dividing, and dividing again. What you have done is produce a new mixture of chromosomes from both you and your partner. From two cells, there are four. From four cells, there are soon eight, and so on. Some cells divide quicker than others, but as this little fertilized ovum gradually becomes more complicated, it floats down your fallopian tube surrounded by nutrient cells. the end of this first week, a nearly invisible, fertilized
ovum may boast anywhere from more than one hundred cells all closely knit into a little bail and ready to move into your uterus. Experts sometimes refer to this fertilized ovum now as a which means mulberry in Latin. Inside your womb.The morula finds important nutrients-sugars, salts, and critical elements-for growth. Still floating, it will grow quickly and become more sophisticated as the cells start specializing and taking on different tasks. Some link up to create kidneys. Others complete a small heart to pump blood. Timing is precise and the genetic blueprint, with fortysix chromosomes from you and forty-six chromosomes from your mate, lays a course for your unborn baby

Whether you are ecstatic about your new state, at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum and feeling blue, or somewhere in between joyful amusement and sheer panic, information is going to be key. In fact, no matter how you feel psychologically ignorance is never bliss when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth. Changes and challenges are going to come fast. For most normal women, pregnancy lasts approximately forty weeks. 280 days. nine months or, using childbirth language, three trimesters of three months each. Statistics tell us that 95 percent of all babies are born between the 266th and the 294th day after their conception. Two hundred and eighty days doesn’t sound like a very long time at all and it isn’t, especially when you consider the monumental metamorphosis that your body is now beginning, both physically and emotionally.

Shaky’? Scared’? Ecstatic’? Happy? Nervous’? Sick? Energetic? Exhausted? Joyous? Think about it: pregnancy is the only time in your life that you will ever be two people at once! Go easy on yourself.
Experts are usually uncertain about the exact date of fertilization, so your pregnancy and due date are timed and predicted on the basis of the first day of your last period. However, because unborn life really begins after one of your eggs is fertilized during intercourse, this roughly sketched time line of fetal development and activity is built on that foundation. Some charts of “fetal growth” start back at the
first day of your last period and not on the day of fertilization. Ovulation occurs around the fourteenth day after your last period and your body releases a healthy egg, ready and able to be impregnated a successful sperm. Your mate actually ejaculates up to 400 million sperm into your vagina during intercourse, but most never make it to the egg waiting in one of your fallopian tubes. The successful sperm is able to pass through the soft mucus being secreted by your cervix. If by chance this sperm arrives a little before the egg has been released, it can survive for up to two days.

Uterus 

A hollow organ, the uterus is shaped like a pear and is normally about three inches long. The lining of your uterus, known as the endometrium, is velvety and rich in bloody tissue. Sitting right in the middle of your reproductive organs, the uterus, or womb, can hold only about a teaspoon of liquid ordinarily. When you are pregnant, it expands to the size of a watermelon to hold your growing baby. the amniotic fluid, and the placenta. Continually being renewed, the lining of your uterus builds up in response to messages sent by your hormones and then sheds itself once a month during your menstrual period when you don’t get pregnant. During the first half of your menstrual cycle, estrogen makes your endometrial lining thicken. As your ovaries release eggs midway through your monthly cycle, progesterone takes over and helps your body get ready for a possible pregnancy If no fertilized egg finds its way to your womb, the endometrium falls apart and you have a period. Your hormone levels are at their lowest during that very first day of your period.

 Ectopic pregnancy

When the fertilized egg doesn’t travel all the way to the uterus for implantation in the endometrial lining. the result can be what is called an ectopic pregnancy. Trying to grow outside the womb, this ‘wayward egg can end up in your abdominal cavity. your ovary and even on your cervix; but mostectopic pregnancies occur in a fallopian tube. This is why they are often referred to as tubal pregnancies.
A dangerous and potentially life-threatening situation, an ectopic pregnancy ‘will give you warning signs of trouble. The three most important signs, according to New York obstetrician-gynecologist Howard Berk, M.D. are: “Bleeding, pain, and a positive pregnancy test.” You may experience severe cramps that begin on one side of your abdomen and travel to the other. This is a sharp, stabbing pain and it may hurt to move. You may start to bleed, be nauseous,
dizzy, fatigued beyond the ordinary and you must seek emergency medical treatment immediately. Go to a hospital. Don’t wait for the pain to pass. If the fertilized egg ruptures in your fallopian tube, you may bleed throughout your abdominal cavity. Surgery might be scheduled immediately. However. ultrasound and blood tests nowadays can help determine the diagnosis of an ectopic pregnancy. New technology has given practitioners a variety of warning signs so the large majority are detected before they reach crisis proportions.

You may know that you have two of them, but perhaps their size-four inches long-and their consistency will come as a surprise. Your fallopian tubes remind some experts of stretched tubes of cooked pasta. Lying just above your ovaries, fallopian tubes have featherlike fingers at the ends closest to the ovaries. They look a little like pieces of seaweed floating on the ocean. The little feather tips are called fimbria, which is the Latin word for fringes, and they make it easier for the tubes to stretch out and capture the ripened egg at ovulation time. Picture millions of tiny hairs and you’ll be able to envision the fimbria. better. Mucus and fluids help move the egg into and down the pastalike tube where it waits to meet the sperm. If no suitor appears on time, the egg is simply absorbed back into your body.
Never sell those fallopian tubes short’ Lined with muscular ligaments, they actually contract to help sperm and egg move closer together and toward conception. Closer to the uterus, they tighten up to hold onto an egg until the uterus is ready
for the planting process. which won’t occur until five to seven days after ovulation. Every once in a while. fallopian tubes are unable to catch eggs as they are released. However, if an egg falls to the floor of your pelvis, fallopian tubes have the power to reach down and pick it up, pushing the egg along closer to conception.

Body Basics

You can certainly get pregnant without a Ph.D. in human physiology, but sometimes it’s nice to know what’s in your reproductive tract. Here are just a few basics to help you gain more respect for the organs that are instrumental in pregnancy.

Your Cervix

In Latin, cervix actually means “neck,” and it’s easy to see the origin of this name. Located at the neck of your uterus, your cervix is only about an inch “vide but its opening is even smaller so it car
protect your uterus from germs or other unwanted invaders. Connected to your uterus, your cervix opens mid-cycle and the reason it opens mid-cycle is that nature has created a wonderful  term. When you ovulate, the cervix gets larger and the cervical mucus changes. You may notice a mucus discharge in the middle of your menstrual cycle when this mucus consistency changes. Before and after this time, the cervical mucus is thick and viscous to keep your system closed. Only at the time of ovulation, does your cervix dilate and the mucus change so that the sperm can get through. During labor and then delivery, the cervix goes through dramatic changes as it opens to a full ten centimeters, or four inches, to give your baby an opening to the outside world.

Your Vagina

A muscular passage only about four or five inches in length, your vagina is connected to the cervix on the inside and leads to the outside of your body. Most of the time. your vaginal walls stay close together; but during sex, as well as in childbirth, this organ exhibits amazing capabilities.

Your Ovaries

Sitting right within reach of your fallopian tubes are the two little, yellowish walnut-shaped glands known as ovaries. Their color inside your body is unlike nearby structures, which are covered in a greyish protective film. These yellow glands are able to release the eggs they produce monthly as well as the hormones you need to menstruate and to get pregnant. The hypothalamus is an area of your brain that secretes releasing factors. The hypothalamus first secretes follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), which ripens an egg and produces estrogen. When the estrogen gets to a particular level in your body, not only does it turn down the FSH but it causes the release of luteinizing hormone (Lrl). When the LH comes out, on about the twelfth day, you ovulate. Then, in the ovary, a body forms called the corpus luteurn, which maintains the progesterone. If there is no pregnancy, then the corpus luteum fades. Then, you get your period. This is the basic cycle that can happen. All of these messages start from the very beginning of your cycle and not just at the time you are ovulating. Each month, several eggs ‘will begin to ripen and move, but usually only one rises all the way to the surface of an ovary. If you could get a closer look inside, you would be able to see 3 ‘ot or uneven pits and bumps on the ovaries, which indicatewhere other follicles degenerated. In a healthy woman, along with stains, from all the monthly most women, ovulation takes place approximately two to three the elevation of LH levels.