If ever you are wondering if you are really pregnant or not, have a pregnancy test on your own. Here are some guidelines to help you become aware of the early pregnancy symptoms:

Missed Menstrual Period
Missed menstrual period is the most obvious early pregnancy symptom. This usually results to having doubts about your condition, if you are pregnant or not. If you experience this, you will have questions at the back of your mind as to what are the other early symptoms of pregnancy.

However, missed period does not justify that you are really pregnant since other factors may cause delayed or missed periods. Emotional or physical conditions may also be the cause.

Having an Intuition That You Are Pregnant
Most women believe in their instinct since they often proved it to be correct. There is a feeling that you are pregnant as you notice major differences in you. You may feel breast tenderness, low back pain or even mood swings.

Tender, Swollen Breasts
A tender, swollen breast is one of the remarkable early pregnancy symptoms. When you are getting dressed or just trying to be comfortable and have a sleep, you will notice this symptom. No need to worry as this is part of the new hormone levels you are encountering when you are pregnant. The sensations you will feel is somewhat similar when you are expecting your menstrual period, only more so.

When you are pregnant, your breasts are more sensitive since they have a vital role in childbirth. They are being prepared for breastfeeding. Swollen or tender breasts usually occur during 1-2 weeks of pregnancy. The areola becomes darker and nipples are often painful.

This is the first physical symptom of pregnancy. Those who have experienced getting pregnant before, they can even detect if they are pregnant again based on this symptom alone.

Fatigue
During noon time, you may feel like you want to lie down when you are working. This early pregnancy symptom is due to increase production of hormones estrogen and progesterone. It may vanish once your body already adjusted to the changes that it has going through.

Even when you are just in the office the whole day, you may feel like you have run in a marathon. This is because of the high-levels of progesterone. You can feel this early pregnancy symptom as early as first week.

A woman’s body is working very hard to keep up with the changes that occur during early pregnancy. The heart is pumping harder and faster to bring nutrients to the growing fetus. Most women experience extra fatigue during early pregnancy because of increased progesterone production. Progesterone is known as a natural central nervous system depressant. Emotional aspect is also one of the reasons for unusual tiredness and fatigue. During early pregnancy, a woman may just burst into tears for no reason at all.

Frequent Urination
A frequent visit to the restroom is one of the noticeable early pregnancy symptoms. A swelling uterus puts pressure on your bladder.

Nausea With or Without Vomiting
This can also be relating to morning sickness. Most women experience this after a month of being pregnant. When your body already adjusted to the changes it is going through, this symptom usually disappears during your second trimester. Nausea happens at any time of the day or night.

Feeling nauseated or morning sickness varies to most women. Some may never experience it while others always experience it throughout their pregnancy.

Faintness and Dizziness
This is somewhat surprising symptom. When you didn’t eat for a while you may feel faint. When you are pregnant, your baby’s main source of food is sugar. If you will not eat, you will surely have low blood sugar which results to faintness and dizziness.

Food Aversions or Cravings
Craving for unusual combination of foods is a well-known cliché. You may don’t want the smell of fried foods or coffee when you are pregnant. Food cravings are really normal at this stage. This usually happens in the first trimester in which hormonal changes are the most dramatic.

Food aversions or cravings can be an early pregnancy symptom but sometimes it is just a sign that your body is low on a particular nutrient. If you experience craving along with the other symptoms, start counting the days from your last menstrual period.

Most obstetrician recommend taking pure fish oil capsule and good pre-natal vitamin supplement to ease some cravings and prevent extra gain weight. If you are taking vitamins, food aversions or cravings may not be that strong. You need to be healthy when you are pregnant since there is already a growing person inside you. A food aversion is less well known but is really common symptom of early pregnancy. You will notice that the food you previously want doesn’t seem appetizing anymore.

Being Sensitive to Aromas
Being super sensitive to aromas is one of the early symptoms of pregnancy. This may be the result of estrogen flooding your body.

Mood Swings
This is surely a well-known symptom of early pregnancy and is somewhat related to nausea. There is also emotional adjustment for the new responsibility once you are pregnant. Mood swings are very transparent during first semester, but these are really normal.

When you are pregnant, a lot of instances come to mind. You may be thinking about your labor and delivery, the future cost of college, finances and other factors that affect your pregnancy. It is surely normal to feel excitement and depression. You just need understanding and support especially from your partner. But you also have to explain your mood swingS since you are the one doing most of the hard part. It is all a mystery to most men why you have mood swings.

Being pregnant is the most exciting moment to any woman. You maybe wondering what it feels to be one and what are the early symptoms of pregnancy. You can check if these symptoms apply to you or you can ask other people. Pregnancy symptoms vary from possible, probable and positive.  Once you experience early pregnancy symptoms, have a pregnancy test at home and see your obstetrician to confirm your assumption.

Stomach cramps during pregnancy can be of many types and the causes varied. But, if your cramps are combined with continued vaginal spotting or streaking, vaginal bleeding, feverishness, dizzy feeling and extreme fatigue, then you need to consult your gynecologist immediately.

Causes: Muscles softening and ligament stretching to help expansion of abdominal area and for passage of baby can cause muscle cramps. Other causes of cramps could be indigestion, gas problem, constipation, urinary infection and sometimes even cold weather causes muscle cramps. Some women even feel it even when they sit down and get up and while coughing.

What do different types of stomach cramps during pregnancy indicate?

Impending Miscarriage: Continuous cramps with heavy bleeding, fatigue and dizziness indicate chances of miscarriage. Consult your doctor immediately to take remedial measures.

Pre-eclampsia: High blood pressure or unstable blood pressure causes cramps in the stomach. These cramps are called pre-eclampsia and are generally accompanied with swollen hands, feet and swollen face.

Ectopic or tubular pregnancy: When the zygote/embryo implants itself outside the uterus wall mostly in the fallopian tube or other reproductive organs, it is called ectopic pregnancy. When these organs stretch while the embryo grows stomach cramps during pregnancy occur.

Placental Abruption: As you know the placenta and the amniotic sac protects and nourishes the baby throughout the gestational period. Placental abruption takes place when the placenta gets detached from the uterus fully or partially causing stomach cramps or abdominal pain.  Bleeding, spasmodic muscle contraction, lower back pain, fatigue and tenderness of uterus accompany placental abruption. Consult your doctor immediately.

Preterm Labor: continuous and severe stomach cramps during pregnancy accompanied with back pain before completion of 280 days or 37 weeks is indicative of labor pain before term or preterm labor. This is caused due to undue pressure on the pelvic area and the rectum.

False labor pain or Braxton Hicks: Another common occurrence is to experience delivery kind of labor pain during the last weeks of term. This will also be accompanied with low back pain and muscular contraction. However the false pain will not result in delivery.

Precautionary Measures: Let me first assure you that mild stomach cramps during pregnancy disappears gradually and you need not worry about it. However you must get it confirmed from the doctor that there are no major issues. A little regular rest, healthy and nutritious food and exercise will help you to deal with this pain. Just remember any chronic pain must not be neglected and it is better to keep your doctor or health care provider updated on how you feel for the safety of you and your baby.

Not all pregnancy nausea remedies work for everyone but it doesn’t hurt to try some things out to see if they work for you.  Some home remedies for morning sickness are pretty obvious like staying away from foods or orders that might trigger the gage reflex.  You can also try to eat bland food that is cold or at room temperature.  Hot food has more of an odor.

We have all heard the old wives tale of eating crackers to cure morning sickness. For some women find that carbohydrates are most appealing when they feel nauseated and putting a little something in your stomach wards off vomiting.  Keep crackers near your bed and nibble a few before you even get out of bed.  You can even nibble on some as you get ready to start the day or on your drive to work.  You can also try to eat small, frequent meals and snacks throughout the day so that your stomach is never empty.  Plus, try sipping fluids frequently throughout the day between meals.  But be careful not to drink so much at one time that your stomach feels full which will make you less hungry for food.  Aim to drink about a quart and a half of fluids altogether.  If you have been vomiting a lot you can try drinking a sports drink that contains glucose, salt, and potassium to replace lost electrolytes.

If nausea is really bed you can try acupressure.  Both Eastern and Western medical practitioners describe a pressure point on the body that is about two inches above the crease on the inner part of the wrist.  If this pressure point is stimulated, it may relieve the nausea and vomiting associated with pregnancy.  There are bands available that you can get without prescription at pharmacies and marine stores, which are worn around one or both wrists.  Each band contains a button that presses on the vomiting-sensitive pressure point on the wrist.  Health care providers can also prescribe a device that stimulates the underside of your wrist with a mild electric current.  The device costs about $75 but it is safe works well for some women.  Ginger is another alternative remedy that is said to settle the stomach and help with nausea. Look for a ginger ale that is made with real ginger unlike most supermarket ginger ales.  Or you can grate some fresh ginger into hot water to make ginger tea or use ginger candies.
Make sure to talk to your health care provider before you take powdered ginger root supplements.  There is no way of being positive how much of the active ingredient you’re getting in those capsules. Some experts advise not using them at all.

Several other small steps can be taken to keep pregnancy nausea at bay.  Stay as relaxed and as stress free as possible.  Take time out to watch your favorite television show or movie or simply take a nap.  Take your prenatal vitamins with a big meal or just before bed.  You can also ask your healthcare provider whether you can switch to a prenatal vitamin with a low dose of iron or no iron for the first trimester.  Iron can be hard on your digestive system sometimes.  Although nausea and vomiting is a normal stage in pregnancy, it doesn’t have to be a horrible experience.

When a woman becomes pregnant, her body releases several different hormones.  Like all drugs, hormones have a couple of unpleasant side effects like intestinal upsets.  It is believed that the hormone HCG is the one most likely responsible for morning sickness.  HCG stands for human chronic gonadotropin.  This hormone is made by the embryo soon after conception and is later made by the placenta.  Its role is to maintain the production of progesterone which is anther hormone that is critical for pregnancy.  Progesterone itself might be the cause of morning sickness as well.  The increase of the progesterone in the body relaxes the muscles in the uterus which prevents early childbirth.  But, as a result, progesterone might also relax the stomach and intestines, leading to excess acids in the stomach and therefore nausea and vomiting.  Another hormone that might be the cause of the nausea and vomiting that comes with the first stages of pregnancy is estrogen.  Estrogen is always present in a woman of child bearing years but it rises rapidly in early pregnancy.

It has been suggested that morning sickness can be caused by a vitamin B deficiency.  Taking a vitamin B6 supplement does seem to help ease the nausea in pregnant women.  But this does not mean that they have a vitamin deficiency.  Actually one study showed that there were no significant differences in the levels of B6 in women with morning sickness and those without.  So it is unclear why B6 is helpful.  There has also been some evidence that taking a multivitamin at the time of conception and in early pregnancy helps to prevent severe morning sickness as well.  But yet again, no one knows why.

On the other hand, the causes of morning sickness might not lie with the body’s hormone levels at all.  It might be triggered by other aspects of the body.  The cause of morning sickness might lie with an enhanced sense of smell and sensitivity to odors.  Certain aromas instantly trigger her gag reflex in pregnant women.  While it could have to do with the sense of smell it might also be a result of higher levels of estrogen.  Plus, some women just might have gastrointestinal tracts that are simply more sensitive to the changes of early pregnancy.  Also, some women might be predisposed to having nausea and vomiting during pregnancy as an abdominal response to stress.  Although there is no real evidence of this but, the more vomiting and nausea that is taking place, the more stressed a woman might become and therefore almost continuing the process.

Although the cause of morning sickness is still unclear, experts do know that, in most cases, it does not last throughout the entire pregnancy.  Typically, by the end of the third month when the blood level of some of these hormones levels off or begins to decline, so does the intestinal maladies that are caused by these hormones and therefore, the morning sickness begins to reside.

But experts agree that it does play role within the pregnancy for one reason or another.  Morning sickness is thought to protect the fetus.  Contained in many plants are chemical toxins that protect the plant from being eaten.  Adults have defenses against toxins such as these including extensive arrays of detoxification made by the liver and the surface of tissues of certain other organs.  These defenses have not fully developed within the fetus.  Even a small dose of plant toxins might have certain effects on the adult but might be lethal to the fetus.  Pregnancy nausea causes the woman to become nauseated when exposed to the smell of taste of foods that are likely to contain toxins that might injure the fetus therefore protecting it.

Morning sickness may also protect the mother as well.  The immune system of a pregnant woman is suppressed during pregnancy most likely to reduce the chances of rejecting tissues of her own offspring.  Because of this, consuming animal products containing parasites or harmful bacteria can be especially dangerous to a pregnant woman.

Luckily, mild to moderate nausea and occasional vomiting associated with morning sickness won’t threaten your baby’s well-being.  If a pregnant woman does not gain any weight in the first trimester, it generally is not a problem.  As long as they are able to stay hydrated and aren’t starving, the fetus will remain healthy.  In most cases, the pregnant woman’s appetite will return soon enough and they will start gaining weight.

Most women tolerate morning sickness pretty well.  They have to make sure they are keeping themselves healthy and are letting their doctor’s know if there are any problems along the way.  Young women who are experiencing their first pregnancies and women who are carrying twins or multiple fetuses might experience more morning sickness then others.  Some women have nausea and vomiting beyond their first trimester and a few have it continually throughout their entire pregnancy.  Pregnant women do need to be aware that severe or prolonged vomiting has been linked to a greater risk of preterm birth.  It can also lead to low birth weight or newborns that are small for their gestational age.  If a woman is having problems with morning sickness the doctor might prescribe anti-nausea medication to ward off dehydration and further pregnancy complications.

Morning sickness usually starts at about four weeks of pregnancy and typically ends around six weeks of pregnancy.  If your nausea and vomiting continues past that time, make sure to let your doctor know at your next visit.  But sometimes during that time frame, morning sickness might become really bad.  You should get in touch with your doctor to let him know if your nausea is not getting better despite the use of a few home remedies.  You also need to make sure that you call the doctor if you haven’t been able to eat or drink anything or keep anything down for twenty-four hours.

In extremely rare instances, nausea and vomiting may be so severe that a woman cannot maintain proper nutrition, fluids or gain enough weight.  It may lead to a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum.  Hyper means “over”, emesis means “vomiting” and gravidarum means “pregnant state.”  It affects about one in every three hundred pregnant women.  The condition is classified as vomiting that is frequent, persistent and severe.  If is left untreated, the mother will not be able to get the nutrition and fluids she needs.  If it goes untreated long enough it could threaten the health of the fetus.  Make sure your doctor knows how much you have been vomiting during the day.  If you are vomiting more then two or three times a day you should call your doctor.

Excessive vomiting can also lead to dehydration.  Dehydration happens when your body eliminates more water than you can replace.  Simply put, you are vomiting and loosing fluids more rapidly then you can drink and use fluids.  Luckily the body lets us know in a variety of ways when we are becoming dehydrated.  Make sure to call your doctor if you are feeling dizzy or feeling faint.  Dizziness is due to low blood pressure caused by dehydration.  You should also call your doctor if you are urinating less, and your urine appears darker in color.  You should also call if your mouth, eyes, and skin are feeling dry.  Dehydration can also cause headaches.  You also might feel increasingly tired, weak or that your mental acuity is lessening.  When it comes to dehydration, you do not need to try to be strong or tough it out.

Most likely, if you are feeling any of these symptoms due to vomiting, you are already dehydrated.  Dehydration can become a serious problem if it is not treated.  It can cause preterm labor and other pregnancy complications.  To ward off dehydration, make sure you are drinking plenty of water; at least 10 pints of water a day or more, if you can handle it.

There are several reasons why some women experience nausea later in the pregnancy.  As you know, part of the cause of nausea in the first trimester is due to hormonal changes within the body.  This can happen again later in the pregnancy as hormone levels continue to fluctuate.  Plus, in the third trimester the baby is larger and encroaching on more space within the body.  Nausea after eating is common in the third trimester because of the uterus pressing up on the stomach.  This can occur with or without heartburn as well.  A good idea to avoid late pregnancy nausea is eating smaller meals and eating them more frequently during the course of the day.  There is not as much room to hold a large meal anymore within the stomach.

The most important thing is to make sure that you remain healthy.  Make sure that you call your doctor if you experience severe stomach pain or vomiting.  Sometimes a virus or another illness can be the cause of the problem.  You also want to make sure that the nausea or vomiting is not interfering with your ability to eat.  The baby as well as the mother needs the vital nutrients they receive from a good diet.  You also want to make sure that you avoid dehydration which can bring on preterm labor by sipping water continually.

Unfortunately, a condition known as hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) causes women to experience severe morning sickness right up until the baby is born and even after the birth of the baby in some cases.  HG is defined as vomiting that is frequent, persistent and severe.  The nausea and vomiting prevent an adequate amount of food and liquids to be absorbed by the body.

It is unclear what the causes of HG are but it might be linked to higher then usual levels of hormones and estrogen that some women produce.  Women suffering from HG will typically loose 5percent or more of their pre-pregnancy body weight.  They will also become dehydrated.  They tend to have difficulty with their daily activities, have an altered sense of taste or they might even have hallucinations.  The condition might also put the fetus at risk for diabetes or heart disease later on in life or neurobehaviorial issues right from birth due to the malnutrition and dehydration during pregnancy.  Because of the risk of dehydration and complications to the pregnancy, women with HG need to be treated as a medical emergency.  Antiemetic medications, intravenous re-hydration or nutritional support might be needed.

Thankfully, nausea later in pregnancy is not common to most women.  Those who do suffer from it may find relief in repositioning themselves while eating to alleviate the pressure on the stomach.  If you or someone you know is suffering from extreme nausea during a pregnancy, make sure that the treating doctor is aware of how often the vomiting is happening and the things they have done to treat it on their own.  And of course, if any dehydration symptoms are being seen or felt, make sure you seek help right away.

It is unknown what the exact cause of morning sickness it.  Most likely it has to do with the raising hormone levels within a woman’s body that are produced after she has conceived.  Although we don’t know the exact cause, we do know that certain types of women are more likely to get morning sickness then others.  Typically those who are pregnant with twins or higher multiples are more likely to suffer from morning sickness.  This may be due to the higher levels of HCG, estrogen, or other hormones in their systems.  Women who also have a history of vomiting or nausea after taking birth control pills are also more likely to suffer from morning sickness during pregnancy due to the body’s response to estrogen.  Genetics might play a role with morning sickness as well.  Women who have had mothers or sisters with severe morning sickness typically suffer from it as well.  Plus, if the woman has had a history of migraine headaches, they are more likely to be ill with morning sickness during pregnancy.

There have been long debates as to whether morning sickness was different depending on if the women are carrying a boy or a girl.  One study found that women who were carrying a girl more 50 percent more likely to be ill with morning sickness during their pregnancy.  Although the less debatable topic is that women who are more likely to have a miscarriage are less likely to be suffering from morning sickness during that pregnancy.  If the placenta or the baby were not developing properly, the women would have lower levels of pregnancy hormones in their system resulting in less nausea.  But, plenty of women do not suffer from morning sickness and go on to have perfectly healthy babies.

There are several ways to ease the effects of morning sickness.  A woman can change her eating habits by eating smaller meals more frequently during the day.  Avoid the stomach being completely empty or completely full.  Pregnant women can also make sure they get plenty of rest.  They should also avoid sells and foods that aggravate their nausea.  Some woman have also found relief through the use of acupressure or motion sickness bands.