What’s Happening With Mom?
Are you missing something? This week you won’t have your period. The feeling that something hasn’t shown up when it should often sends women running to the drugstore for a home pregnancy test.
Handily, the week where you miss your period is also the first week that home pregnancy tests can detect pregnancy. These tests measure a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin, hGC, which is produced as soon as the embryo has implanted in the uterus lining. This usually happens sometime around the end of week 4 or the beginning of week 5.
A pregnancy test at the start of this week is 90% accurate. At the end of this week, it’s 97% accurate. If you get a negative result, but are still missing your period, try testing again in a few days.
So you’ve peed on a stick, and seen the positive result. You might now jump around the house in ecstasy, go white with shock, be absolutely petrified, some combination of the above, or something totally different.
Congratulations! We know we said that already, but we are so excited for you!
While you have to decide who in your family and friends you want to share the news with, one phone call you do need to make now is to the doctor’s office. Medical pre-natal care is very important, particularly in early pregnancy. After you have called the people who you need to tell immediately, the next call should be to the obstetrician’s office.
If you were thinking the only decision you were going to face was choosing a name and an adorable going-home outfit, here’s the first of many more choices you’ll be making: selecting the obstetrician who will take care of you and your baby during your pregnancy. Your obstetrician will be with you for the next nine months, and is likely to be the doctor who will deliver your baby so it’s important to choose one you feel comfortable with.
Now you know you are pregnant, you need to look after yourself, so your body can look after your baby. Eat well, get plenty of sleep, and avoid the pregnancy no-no’s that could be hazardous to your growing baby.
What’s Happening With Baby?
This week, your baby doesn’t look like a baby, more like a cluster of cells, and is more properly called an embryo. The embryo is almost too small to be seen, but it’s busy.
The most important things get done first, and the first thing to do is to organize which cells will grow into which major body systems.
The cells are organizing themselves into three layers. One layer will form baby’s brain, spine, nerves, and spinal cord. Another layer will form the heart and blood vessels. The third layer will become baby’s lungs, and digestive system. Right now, the brain and heart layers are developing most rapidly.
The placenta is developing too, and has formed a blood supply that connects your blood to your baby. Now you and baby are physically connected and you’ll stay that way until baby is born. The placenta’s job is to take oxygen and nutrients from your blood to your baby. It also removes waste products from baby so your body can get rid of them.
Tags: embryo, First Trimester, hGC, home pregnancy test, I'm late!, obstetrician, pediatrician, placenta, pregnancy no-no's
