Early Signs Pregnancy

Here are the top three early signs pregnancy that most women experience based on a survey of 357 women who were pregnant for the first time.  

• Feeling unexpectedly emotional
• Breast tenderness
• Fatigue

For complete survey results and some great tips read Symptoms and Signs of Pregnancy 

Let’s dig into each of these signs a little more to give you a better idea of how they might apply to you.  We asked the mothers-to-be who took our survey to give examples of how they felt.

Feeling unexpectedly emotional

One of the interesting findings we learned was that feeling “unexpectedly emotional” rather than “general moodiness” or “mood swings” was the first pregnancy sign.  As one mother-to-be put it:

“Normally when I am about to have my period, I get a little moody.  This means that I get irritated with people faster than usual.  It was not moodiness, but feeling unexpectely emotional that was my first sign I was finally pregnant.  I’d been trying to get pregnant for a couple years.  It was when I all of a sudden started crying over something stupid while talking with my husband in the car on the way home from an afternoon with friends that motivated my husband to pull over at the nearest pharmacy so that we could purchase a pregnancy test. I had no idea why I was crying, it was like an emotional wave that caught me up suddenly and very intensely, like if a good friend had suddenly died.  This was very different from the low grade irritation or mood swings between happy and sad that I was used to experiencing around the time of my period.”

Fatigue

Another interesting distinction that was uncovered when we asked about early signs pregnancy was that typical fatigue is not what women experienced when the got pregnant.  Suzy described it this way: 

“The sign that made me suspect that I was pregnant was feeling tired in the middle of the afternoon.  If I haven’t been getting alot of sleep or if I work out really hard over the weekend, I can often feel a little tired in the afternoon while at work.  Normally I go for a 15-20 minute walk and I feel fine.  When I got pregnant it was totally different.  I wasn’t just a little tired, I felt overwhelmed by tiredness.  I literally felt like I couldn’t sit in my desk chair for a minute longer.  Because I could barely keep my eyes open, I cut my meeting short thinking I’d go for a little walk.  I walked out of my office and made it half way across the parking lot before realizing that I wasn’t going to be able to fix this with a walk. Instead, I made a beeline to the parking garage, got in my car, reclined the seat and had an hour nap in the middle of the day!  I'd never done that before in my entire life!  I didn’t realize I was pregnant for another few days when I realized that my period was late and I took a pregnancy test.”

Breast tenderness

Many women report having tender and swollen breasts early during their pregnancy.  Heidi had an interesting way of describing how her breasts changed early on:  

“I got pregnant in the fall.  What made me realize I might be pregnant was going out sailing with my friends.  I got a little chilled while we were out on the water, which is normal for me.  What wasn’t normal is that when my nipples got erect they killed.  The pain was sharp and burning when my nipples got erect.  When I bundled up with extra warm clothes and my nipples relaxed the pain went away.  I had no idea what was going on until about a week later when I realized I was pregnant.”

Like reading about early signs pregnancy?  Here is more great pregnancy information:

• Dealing with the discomforts of pregnancy
• Discharge in early pregnancy
• Home pregnancy testing
• Answers to top questions about pregnancy

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