Being pregnant is a time of great change. Your waistline expands and your body changes daily. Hormonal changes cause completely new sensations. It can be both marvelous and confusing. Each pregnancy is different and each woman is different.
But some sensations could be symptoms of something more serious. Your body is a pretty finely tuned machine and it tries to warn you when things are not going right. When you are pregnant you tend to get used to ignoring all the new and different sensations of pregnancy, so it is not always so easy to notice early warning signs.
If you learn what to look out for, then early warnings can be dealt with easily. Strange symptoms are best acted on straight away with a call to your doctor. Early in the day means you have time for the doctor to deal with it, whereas after hours means you will need to go and seek medical help. This is not meant to scare you into worrying about your pregnancy. But if there is a warning sign then you can identify a problem early and do something about it.
Although your pregnancy might seem complicated the first time around, your body should generally take care of itself. Most women have healthy pregnancies. Some, however, have some serious problems that can put their babies in jeopardy. What do you need to know about pregnancy so that this won’t happen to you? Experts say that some symptoms should be checked out straight away. Here are 15 symptoms of conditions in pregnancy that you should not ignore.
1. Spotting
Is it Bleeding or spotting? Finding a drop of blood on your underpants during pregnancy can be scary. But it is not always a symptom of something serious. Spotting or light bleeding is sometimes not really a big deal. If you do notice light pink drops on your underwear then you should use a panty liner so that you can track the spotting. If you have identified the color, then you should look at the quantity. Spotting is not enough to fill a panty liner. Spotting is common in the first trimester of the pregnancy and can happen in 1 in 4 pregnancies.
Light bleeding, or spotting, during pregnancy, is common, especially during the first trimester. Usually, this is no cause for alarm. To understand what you are seeing, you should first look at the color. The color of spotting should be a bit lighter than blood and fairly transparent. The shade varies anywhere from light pink to brown.
The fertilized egg can cause spotting when it implants into the uterus wall. This happens because the egg burrows into the blood-rich lining of the uterus. This process starts about six days after fertilization and can often be confused with a period. So, if your period arrives a week before it is due and seems to go away again after a very light bleed then you need to do a pregnancy test.
Spotting can also be caused by sex during pregnancy, as the cervix is very sensitive. Sex during pregnancy does not cause miscarriages. Spotting can also be caused by an infection that is unrelated to your pregnancy. A vaginal infection like candida or vaginosis, or even a sexually transmitted infection can cause an irritable cervix that makes it vulnerable to spotting.