Pregnancy symptoms, explained

Every symptom, A to Z

• Abdominal itching

  Oh your belly seems to be bitten by a swarm of bees, it itches so much! You are not alone: skin irritation on a growing belly is a very common problem beginning in the fifth month of pregnancy.

• Abdominal pain and cramping

  During pregnancy you can sometimes feel some discomfort in your abdomen. Most often it is caused by gas, bloating, or constipation.

• Acne and pimples

  Even if your skin was bright and clear before pregnancy, you may notice pimples or even acne on your face and other parts of your body.  Why? Hormones again.

• Allergy

  You are sneezing, itching and having irritated eyes? If so, you could be experiencing an allergy, even if you have never had it.

• Anxiety

  Every pregnant woman worries about her baby, herself, the future etc. Only 1 in 10 women experiences strong anxiety during pregnancy.

• Appetite decrease

  Everybody says that you will feel like you are starving all the time once you are pregnant. But where is your appetite? You can't even think about food without nausea!

• Appetite increase

  Feel as if you're never full? Eating everything in sight, but still feel hungry?  Increased appetite during pregnancy is common, especially after morning sickness and nausea become much lighter or…

• Back pain

  As your baby grows, it affects your body more, and one day you may feel that awful pain in your back.

• Bleeding gums

  While brushing your teeth, you suddenly see blood on your toothbrush... should you start to panic? No.

• Bloating

  Do you feel like you have gas and are bloated all the time as if you are a balloon?

• Bloodshot eyes

  You may have noticed that your eyes are turning red more often than usual. This is not uncommon because of the pregnancy hormonal splash your eyes produce less tears and as a result, your eyes become…

• Bloody show

  Bloody show is a thick, pinkish-brown, stringy discharge that you may notice in the last weeks on pregnancy. It is totally normal and safe, bloody show means your delivery is coming soon.

• Blurred vision

  You never thought that pregnancy would affect your vision, but here it is, everything seems blurry.

• Breast engorgement

  During pregnancy, your body is like an actor before the most important play in his life — rehearsing all the time what he will do after delivery.

• Breast leaking

  Your body is actively getting ready for delivery, checking out all the systems. This also concerns the milk-production department. Your breasts may start leaking a thin, yellowish fluid.

• Breast pain and soreness

  This feeling is not totally new for you as almost all women experience breast soreness during their period.

• Breast tenderness

  Your breasts start to grow from the very start of your pregnancy, so it’s no surprise that they become very tender.

• Bright oily face (Pregnancy Glow)

  You may have noticed that your face became... brighter? It happens because your body when being pregnant produces twice more blood, and it affects your circulatory system.

• Bright visible veins

  You could wake up one morning and notice that your body (especially your breasts and belly) look like a road map because of bright visible veins.

• Burst of energy

  You feel that you have endless energy to do everything and even more! Is it a special gift from your child? Actually no.

• Calf tenderness

  When you get pregnant, you may sometimes feel a strange sensation in your legs. Your calves may be tender and sometimes hurt or may even develop cramps.

• Can't get comfortable in bed

  Feeling tired all the time, you dream about your cozy bed, but suddenly it appears to not be cozy at all.

• Cervical dilation and effacement

  When your body prepares to give birth, your cervix is providing an opening from the uterus to the birth canal — unblocking the path to your baby's exit route.

• Chills

  You've heard a lot about having the sweats and hot flashes during pregnancy, but freezing all the time... really? Actually, yes.

• Cholestasis

  Cholestasis of pregnancy is a very rare but potentially serious liver condition that causes sudden, severe itching. It's also known as intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy, or ICP.

• Clumsiness

  Feeling like a bull in a china shop all the time can be embarrassing. You may feel it especially strong in the last few months before giving birth.

• Constipation

  You are constantly rushing to the toilet, but only to pee. No matter how hard you try nothing else is coming out! About half of pregnant women face the same problem. Why?

• Contractions (Braxton-Hicks)

  You may feel contractions even before labor, you'll feel your uterus, lower abdominal area, or groin tighten or squeeze, and then relax.

• Dark line on the belly (linea nigra)

  You may be feeling like a zebra with a dark line that runs from your navel to your pubic bone. Most often it's called linea nigra.

• Darkening of freckles, moles and other areas of your skin

  When pregnant, you produce lots of hormones that change your body all the time. It also affects your skin — you may notice pigmented spots, pregnancy glow, or something else, like changed…

• Depression

  You are supposed to feel happiness during pregnancy, but instead you feel empty and sad and don't want to do anything. Familiar symptoms?

• Diarrhea

  Actually, having diarrhea is almost opposite to what most pregnant women experience.

• Dizziness

  You might from time to time feel dizzy, lightheaded, or like you are close your eyes and float away.  The reason for this is simple — your heart works faster, and the volume of blood increases up to…

• Double vision

  You never thought that pregnancy can affect your vision, but here it is, you seem to see everything in double?

• Dramatic worsening of vision

  Dramatic worsening of vision or total loss of vision are bad signs, this can happen to anyone, but they can mean serious problems if you are pregnant, possibly signaling preeclampsia or eclampsia,…

• Dry Itchy Abdomen

  It's a normal situation. Your belly grows faster than your skin can adapt to these changes, so it loses its texture, stretches and tightens, and becomes dry and itchy.

• Edema (swelling)

  You feel twice as big as you really are!  It's quite normal to have swelling during pregnancy, especially in your ankles and feet, because you're retaining more water, and blood changes also make…

• Fainting

  Dizziness with fainting and pregnancy are synonymous for most women. Your blood flow changes dramatically, you produce more blood and your blood vessels become more elastic, this leads to blood…

• Faintness

  In most cases faintness during pregnancy appears when your body produces more blood required by you and your baby, and the blood flow changes alongside with your blood pressure.

• Farting and burping

  Bloating, burping and farting like a silly cartoon character are all a very unglamorous part of pregnancy!  Actually, stay calm, everybody farts. You just fart more often than others.

• Fast hair growth

  Did you notice that your hair looked much better and grew faster after you got pregnant?

• Fatigue and exhaustion

  You feel totally exhausted all the time, like you've been carrying heavy boxes for the last 16 hours without a single break.

• Feeling ill (cold or flu symptoms)

  You have a stuffy nose, headaches and fatigue — you caught a cold, obviously! Actually no, all these and a few more symptoms usually perceived by us as cold or flu symptoms are just side effects of…

• Feeling thirsty

  You drink glass after glass and never seem to get enough water... Sound familiar? There’s nothing to be too worried about here.  During pregnancy your body needs more fluids than usual, but if you…

• Fever

  When you are pregnant you will never be able to tell if you have a fever unless you have a thermometer. During pregnancy the hot flashes caused by the hormonal roller-coaster have probably become…

• Food aversions

  It's quite normal to crave mango ice-cream in the middle of the night or salty salmon with chocolate right now. But what if your favorite dishes now appear to be disgusting?

• Food cravings

  Some women report never having been as crazy about food as during pregnancy. Usually it's totally normal.

• Frequent infections

  You have treated yourself for a cold and then the next day you feel discomfort in your vaginal area.  It may feel like a yeast infection... Why does this happen?

• Gestational Diabetes

  Pregnancy can cause some strange conditions in your body, one of them is gestational diabetes.

• Hair and nail changes

  Did you cheerfully notice that your hair is a lot fuller and that your nails are growing a lot quicker?

• Headache

  Oh, nothing special, just your head feels like it’s going to explode. Headaches are the most often companions of pregnancy, especially till the 4th month of pregnancy.

• Heart palpitations

  You sometimes feel your heart working unusually — racing, flopping in the chest, or even skipping beats. That’s what called heart palpitations during pregnancy.

• Heartburn

  Heartburn is a burning sensation that usually extends from the bottom of the breastbone to the lower throat. You are very likely to have experienced it during your pregnancy.

• Heightened sense of smell

  You smell everything around you? Wow, maybe you are PREGNANT? (Joking!) For your keener sense of smell you can blame pregnancy hormones again, estrogen to be exact.

• Hemorrhoids

  This topic is not for glamorous Instagram discussions for sure. Hemorrhoids are that dull pain you feel in your rectal area that is caused by swollen blood vessels, the size is normally from a pea to…

• Hot flashes

  You are the epicenter of a hormonal storm, so such things as hot flashes and mood swings may have become your daily reality.

• Hunger

  You have eaten your breakfast but are ready to eat an elephant (or two) right now, as a dessert. Don’t worry, that’s a common thing during pregnancy.

• Indigestion

  You feel full even when you haven't eaten much, you feel bloated, and experience heartburn after eating, but unfortunately that’s normal during pregnancy.

• Insomnia

  You would give anything for a nap, right? Insomnia during pregnancy is a common and normal condition, almost 80% of pregnant women are praying for sleep.

• Itching

  You want to scratch all the time like you are a kitty with fleas. It's quite common during pregnancy, especially in the belly and breast areas, as they grow too fast and your skin doesn't have time…

• Joint pain

  Pregnancy changes your body, weakens ligaments, makes you gain extra weight and swell a lot.

• Leg cramps

  It happens, unfortunately. Most often you may start feeling the cramps during the second trimester, especially when resting.

• Leg redness

  You already know that skin color and quality changes are normal during pregnancy. But if your legs suddenly get red (especially the left one), this can be a sign of deep vein thrombosis, a type of…

• Leg swelling

  During pregnancy you are likely to swell all the time (if not — congratulations!), but sometimes only some parts of your body will swell. Most often your feet and ankles are swelling.

• Lower back pain

  It's a very common symptom during pregnancy. Your growing uterus changes your body, moving your center of gravity, pressing on the nerves, stretching your muscles, and putting strain on your back.

• Mask of pregnancy

  “Mask of pregnancy” is how we often call melasma or chloasma. It appears as the dark splotchy painless spots on your face, most commonly these spots appear on your forehead and cheeks.

• Metallic taste (dysgeusia)

  Sometimes you feel like you’ve been sucking on coins. It’s quite normal during pregnancy and over 90% of future mommies face this symptom.

• Migraines

  A migraine usually starts out as a dull ache and then eventually becomes a throbbing, constant, and pulsating pain in the temples, the front of the head, or base of the head and is sometimes…

• Mood swings

  One minute you want to kill everybody, in 10 minutes you are crying while watching a cat video on YouTube and telling everybody how much you love them. You are not alone, dear ?

• Morning sickness

  Morning sickness is the condition from which your pregnancy starts: your body experiences a hormonal roller-coaster and big changes, so nausea, vomiting, and feeling sick is a natural reaction.

• Nausea

  Actually, you don't need to read the description of nausea, during the first trimester in most cases it's a part of your life.

• Nipple pain

  Your body is changing so much during pregnancy and nothing seems normal! Now, your nipples are also acting strange: from a source of pleasure and excitement, they’ve now turned into a source of pain…

• Nosebleed

  Sometimes you may feel like you just went twenty rounds in the ring.  You’re tired, you have a bleeding nose, and a pregnant belly.

• Numbness / tingling

  Numbness or tingling during pregnancy can result in a loss of sensation or a feeling of pins-and-needles in the hands, arms, legs, feet, and other areas of the body.

• Pain during sex

  Love can hurt. Not just a line from a stupid love song anymore: during pregnancy making love can really hurt.

• Pain in legs

  They really hurt! You would never think that during your pregnancy your legs would suffer from pain (and you with your legs, too).

• Paleness

  Becoming pale is not something healthy even in your normal condition, much less during pregnancy.

• Pelvic discomfort

  Having discomfort in your pelvis is okay as your baby grows bigger day by day. Your uterus expands, ligaments and joints loosen due to the hormone relaxin, and all these issues combined put extra…

• Pelvic girdle pain

  Pelvic pain is sharp and focused unpleasant feeling low in your body, from your hips to your groin in the front, or from under your lower back to just under your buttocks.

• Preeclampsia

  Some topics are very hard to include in our health tips, but as they are widely discussed you'd better be well informed.

• Pregnancy brain (forgetting everything)

  Maybe a while ago you remembered that you forgot something. Oh honey, that's okay.

• Problems with teeth

  Pregnancy is about to touch all parts of your body, even your teeth! They are not going to automatically spoil when you get pregnant, but sometimes pregnancy hormones can affect both your teeth and…

• Protruding navel

  Look at your belly button: is it still an "innie"? If it has popped out, don't worry, it's a normal thing now as your uterus grows and pushes your abdomen forward, and your navel simply doesn't have…

• Quick swelling

  During pregnancy you are likely to swell all the time (if not — congratulations!). The amount of blood increases during pregnancy, as well as increasing the level of other fluids.

• Rash

  You are covered with red itchy spots of rash — do you need to blame pregnancy again? In most cases no, so you should consult your doctor about a special diet, skin care, and allergy treatments.

• Rectal bleeding

  It sounds scary, but having rectal bleeding is a very common symptom during pregnancy. It's a typical symptom of hemorrhoids, swollen blood vessels in the rectal area.

• Restless legs syndrome

  It's a problem that hits about 15% of pregnant women. Restless legs syndrome is an uncontrollable urge to move your legs to relieve crawling, tingling, or burning sensations.

• Round ligament pain

  You have two round ligaments in your pelvis, one on either side of your uterus. As your uterus grows, the round ligaments stretch and thicken to accommodate and support it.

• Runny nose

  Looks like you caught a cold: you're sneezing, have a runny nose, and congestion. The reason may be not a disease, it can be pregnancy rhinitis.

• Ruptured membranes (water breaks)

  In the movies a pregnant woman’s water breaks suddenly before her contractions start and couple of short minutes later she is holding a newborn baby. It is a cliché used very often in Hollywood.

• Saliva excess

  Your mouth is always full of your own saliva, and you feel like a camel ready to spit on anyone who would say that it's okay. But it really is!

• Sciatica

  Sciatica is usually leg pain that is more severe than your back pain. You're likely to feel it below the knee as well, and it may even radiate to your foot and toes.

• Sex drive decrease

  They say you’ll want sex all the time when you are pregnant. You make a sarcastic smile and say "Really, guys?” as you don't want it at all. Don't worry, it's completely normal.

• Sex drive increase

  The bigger your belly grows, the more DESIRE you have! Well, that's awesome! If your doctor didn't recommend you to abstain from having sex because of some health reason, enjoy having sex with your…

• Shortness of breath

  You never seem to have enough air in your lungs and seem to always be catching your breath. Don't panic.

• Shoulder pain

  Annoying pain in your shoulder is, unfortunately, quite common.  Almost half of pregnant women face it. The reason is hormones, as usual, relaxin affects shoulder joints and ligaments, too.

• Skin color changes

  Pregnancy is changing your body, sometimes in very unusual ways. You may notice your skin color is changing. It may look like face painting in ancient times before the battle (you will also have one…

• Skin Tags

  Skin tags are painless tiny growths of skin that you can see and feel under your arms or breasts.

• Sleep apnea

  During pregnancy, you may have some problems with sleeping, one of them is sleep apnea — loud snoring and brief, involuntary breathing pauses during sleep.  You may briefly stop breathing and then…

• Sleep disturbances

  You only dreamed of sleep deprivation, but the longer your pregnancy lasts, the harder it actually becomes to sleep well.

• Snoring

  Even if you have never snored before, during pregnancy you can turn into a pretty sleeping bear. Don't worry, it's normal.

• Spider veins

  These are reddish light stripes on your skin. They are painless and appear when blood vessels branch outward because of increased blood circulation.

• Spotting

  Finding some light bloody spots on your panties is a normal and common thing during the first trimester of pregnancy (and sometimes later, too). Every 5th women experiences it.

• Stress

  You know exactly what stress is. Your body and your life are changing, so it can definitely be stressful for you.

• Stretch marks

  Stretch marks are pinkish, reddish, or brownish streaks running down your abdomen and/or breasts.  They are not only visible, they are also touchable.

• Stuffy nose

  A stuffy nose during pregnancy is called pregnancy rhinitis. It is similar to what you feel when you catch a cold, but now it's caused by hormonal changes in your body.

• Sweating

  Why is it so hot in here? And here. And everywhere. Even in winter! Yes, it's just another joke from your pregnancy hormones that affect your hypothalamus (the area of the brain that helps regulate…

• Swollen lymph nodes

  You have probably faced it before, you feel a small swollen ball under your skin. Usually, it indicates that your body is fighting off an infection.

• Symphysis pubis dysfunction

  Symphysis pubis dysfunction (SPD) is a group of symptoms that cause discomfort in the pelvic region. About 20% of pregnant women experience it.

• Tingling hands / Carpal tunnel syndrome

  If you feel like you’ve been working at the computer without a single break and now you feel numbness, tingling, pain, or a dull ache in the fingers, hand, or wrist, especially at night,…

• Urinary Incontinence

  It's a very delicate topic that you thought would be gone when you got older than 3 years.

• Urinating frequently

  You never knew that during your pregnancy the most popular place in your life would be the bathroom.

• Urinating rarely

  After becoming pregnant, you may have started constantly running to the toilet, but now it has suddenly changed and you rarely go to the bathroom. Is it normal? Sure it is.

• Urination with pain or burning

  What could be worse than uncomfortable peeing? You might get a burning or stinging pain while you’re peeing, it's especially awful when you are pregnant and urinating frequently.

• Urine changing: cloudy or strong smelling urine

  Cloudy and strong-smelling urine is common among pregnant women and can be caused by a variety of reasons: pregnancy hormones, diet changes, and dehydration. These reasons are not dangerous.

• Urine changing: dark urine

  Watching the contents of a toilet after peeing (and not only peeing) is a good habit: you can notice something strange and tell your doctor before other symptoms appear.

• Vaginal bleeding

  You may notice light bleeding or even spotting (like at the end of your period) — it's quite a normal thing, especially during the first trimester of your pregnancy, about 25% of women have this…

• Vaginal discharge

  Your vagina participated directly in the baby creation, so it keeps on participating during pregnancy. Vaginal discharge is totally normal starting from early pregnancy until your baby is born.

• Vaginal itching

  Irritated skin in or around the vagina can bring a lot of unpleasant feelings. It's a common symptom during pregnancy: the increase in vaginal discharge during pregnancy can cause the vulva's skin…

• Vaginal thrush

  You may have faced this before pregnancy: itching, irritation, and swelling of your vulva and vagina, sometimes with white creamy vaginal discharge having no smell.

• Varicose veins

  Varicose veins are unusually swollen blue or purple squiggly veins that become visible and swollen near the surface of the skin.

• Vision worsening

  During pregnancy, changes in hormones, metabolism, fluid retention, and blood circulation can all affect your eyes and your eyesight, making your vision worse.

• Vivid dreams

  Pregnancy dreams, especially in the last trimester, are often vivid, and can even be scary, but this is completely normal.

• Vomiting

  Vomiting is the first sign of pregnancy, as we all know from movies. Actually, vomiting is a symptom experienced by 85% moms-to-be, especially in the first trimester in the morning as a glorious part…

Track it, so you can show it to someone

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