Believe information technology or not, your pregnancy journey begins now, even though you're not really pregnant yet. That's considering virtually practitioners kickoff timing pregnancy based on the first day of your last menstrual catamenia (LMP).

In weeks 1 and 2 of pregnancy, your body is gearing up for ovulation and preparing for fertilization, which volition happen in calendar week 3.

Your Baby at Weeks 1 and 2

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This calendar week the groundwork is laid for the big O — ovulation — the all important first stride toward the making of the baby of your dreams. And like those dreams, the baby action is all in your head correct now — where the hypothalamus, the control center in your encephalon, works with its partner in reproduction, the pituitary gland, to outset releasing hormones.

These hormones — called FSH and LH — prompt the ovaries to get cracking on some eggs, ripening ane to maturity within its follicle. All this egg action causes the ovaries to crank up product of ii other powerful hormones, estrogen and progesterone. These hormones, the dynamic duo of the reproductive system, become the reproductive political party in your uterus started, telling the uterus to thicken its lining, forming a blood-pumped cushion in anticipation of hosting a fertilized egg.

Midway through your menstrual cycle — around twenty-four hours 14 if you take an average 28-mean solar day cycle — the dominant follicle in the ovary swells and and so ruptures, releasing the mature egg of the month. That egg, the one with your infant's name on it, bursts through the walls of the ovary and is immediately swept upwards into the fringed opening of the fallopian tube, where information technology will take a six twenty-four hour period odyssey down to the uterus. Ovulation has only occurred.

Meanwhile, swimming forth every bit fast as their little tails can flutter, millions of sperm are making a beeline for that egg, upwards through the cervix, into the uterus, then on to the fallopian tube. One especially persistent suitor survives the grueling journey to intercept the egg and burrow into its outer layers. The victorious sperm plunges into the egg's nucleus, releases its ain genetic contribution, and bingo! the egg is officially fertilized. That twinkle in your eyes is nigh to get…a baby.

At a Glance

Baby encephalon boost

Protect unborn brains! Women who get 400 micrograms of folic acid daily this early on on reduce baby'due south risk of neural tube defects by up to 70 percent.

Chance of twins?

Twin alert! If you're over the age of 35 you produce lots of follicle-stimulating hormones and more follicles, upping the chance that ii or more than eggs will be released during ovulation.

Yous're pregnant! Or are you lot?

Surprise: You lot're not actually significant during your get-go calendar week of pregnancy! Your due appointment is calculated from the first day of your last period.

1 to 2 weeks pregnant is how many months?

If yous're one and two weeks significant, you're in calendar month 1 of your pregnancy. Only eight months to get! Nevertheless accept questions? Hither's some more information on how weeks, months and trimesters are broken downwardly in pregnancy.

Gearing upward to ovulate

No, at that place's no baby or embryo in sight. At least not nevertheless — simply an broken-hearted egg and a whole bunch of eager sperm at their respective starting gates.

But in weeks 1 and two of pregnancy — the week of and immediately following your final menstrual period — your body is working hard to gear up for the event that paves the mode for baby: the large O, or ovulation.

Right now, your uterus has begun preparing for the inflow of a fertilized egg, though yous won't know for sure if that egg has successfully matched up with sperm until next month.

Calculating your due appointment

How tin y'all call this your first week of pregnancy if you lot're not even meaning? Information technology'south extremely hard for your practitioner to pinpoint the precise moment pregnancy begins (when sperm meets egg).

While there's no mistaking the start of your period, the exact twenty-four hours of ovulation can exist hard to nail downwardly. What'due south more, sperm from your partner tin can hang out in your body for several days earlier your egg comes out to greet it. Also, your egg can be kept waiting for up to 24 hours for belatedly sperm to make their appearance.

So in society to give all pregnancies some standard timing, most practitioners use the first 24-hour interval of your final menstrual period as the starting line of your 40-week pregnancy. Still confused? Think of information technology as a caput start — you're clocking in roughly two weeks of pregnancy before y'all even conceive!

Your Body at Weeks 1 and 2

baby size week 1 and 2

Your concluding menstrual period

Yous've just gotten your last period, at to the lowest degree for a while: The lining of your uterus is shedding, taking with information technology last month's unfertilized egg. But that'southward not all that's happening. A new cycle is beginning, one that is the starting point for your pregnancy.

Your menstrual cycle is orchestrated by a symphony of hormones working in concert with ane some other. The starting time to kick in is FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) which — you guessed it — stimulates the follicles to mature, some faster than others.

A second hormone, lutenizing hormone (LH), increases around day 5 and too works with FSH to stimulate the follicles. Each follicle contains an egg, and each month only one follicle becomes the dominant one, destined for ovulation.

As the follicles mature, they produce another hormone, estrogen, which does 2 things. First, it encourages the lining of the uterus to begin thickening again. 2d, once a high enough level of estrogen is reached, it will trigger a spike in the production of LH.

That surge of LH causes the egg from the most mature follicle to burst through the ovarian wall (a process yous probably know best as ovulation, which mostly occurs about 24 to 36 hours later the LH surge) to meet Mr. Right — the lucky sperm that volition plow that eager egg into a infant-in-the-making and make your torso'southward prep work worth all the effort.

Believe it or not, the countdown to delivery 24-hour interval begins now, during the period before fertilization — even though egg and sperm haven't fifty-fifty been in the same room (or womb!).

And if y'all don't get pregnant this time around, don't stress: The average, healthy couple in their 20s and early on 30s have about a 25 to thirty percent chance of getting pregnant with each cycle.

In the meantime, while your uterus is preparing for its new tenant, be a practiced landlord. Recollect of these two weeks of waiting as a last walk-through before baby takes over the keys. You may not technically be pregnant even so, but it isn't likewise early on to act like you are. Start taking your prenatal vitamin, requite upwardly alcohol and smoking and embark on a healthy prenatal diet and exercise routine.

Decline the oestrus to heave fertility

Trying to make a infant? Turn off that electrical blanket and go along each other warm the skilful, erstwhile-fashioned way. Studies bear witness that prolonged, excessive heat — like the kind produced by electric blankets, heating pads, heated seats and even laptops that are placed on a human's lap — tin adversely affect those temperamental testes by slowing down sperm production (and yous want sperm aplenty correct now!). Plus, all that snuggling you'll have to exercise to stay warm will generate the kind of heat that tin can actually make babies.

More ways to increment your odds of scoring a fertilized egg: Try refraining from oral sex before the principal upshot, since saliva tin accept a negative impact on sperm activity and motility … and y'all desire them alive and kicking. Ditto for nearly lubricants, so lay off the Astroglide while yous're trying to excogitate.

Pregnancy Symptoms Week ane and 2

Your temp drops, so spikes

Your basal body temperature, or BBT, dips to its lowest point simply before yous ovulate, then immediately shoots upwardly nearly a one-half a caste every bit presently as ovulation occurs. So purchase a special digital basal thermometer and commencement tracking! Over the course of a few months, you'll be able to discover a pattern to ameliorate predict when that magic moment happens to you lot each month (and when to jump into bed!). Read More

Increased cervical mucus

If you've been monitoring your mucus during these TTC months, you already know that it changes consistency from calendar week to week. Correct now your mucus is probably thick, sticky and flossy, only as y'all head toward C-day (conception), the volume will increase and information technology'll starting time to expect cloudy. Read More than

Tips for Yous This Week

There'south no doubtfulness that your body works overtime when you're expecting — so help give it the extra nutrients it needs to babe-build by getting 400 to 600 micrograms of folic acid daily from all sources, including your prenatal vitamin and folate-rich foods.

Research has shown that taking folic acid offset when you're trying to get pregnant and continuing daily throughout pregnancy not only helps yous conceive only has important health benefits for expecting women and their babies.

Folic acid (and its natural form, folate) can help reduce the adventure of nascency defects including built heart and neural tube defects in your baby, and has even been shown to lower your chances of gestational diabetes, preterm labor and miscarriage.

If you lot're taking a prescription, OTC or herbal med, ask your doc ASAP about whether it's rubber to continue it during pregnancy.

Herbal preparations are non tested or approved by the Nutrient and Drug Assistants (FDA) and are non required to undergo clinical trials. Translation: Their safe, or lack thereof, is unknown.

Even herbs that yous've heard could be helpful during pregnancy may be harmful at some point during the adjacent 9 months. So always get the green light from your practitioner earlier taking any medication or herbal supplement of whatever kind.

Spot early on pregnancy signs

You lot could be weeks away from taking a pregnancy test, but Female parent Nature may requite you a heads-upward in the course of early pregnancy symptoms.

Some, like a heightened sense of odour and tender breasts, can testify up earlier you even miss your menses, while others, similar spotting and urinary frequency, happen a calendar week or two after conception.

Oasis't noticed whatever new symptoms? Plenty of women won't feel any until at to the lowest degree a few weeks or more than into their pregnancies — and some lucky few won't notice whatsoever at all!

You're already imagining the moment when those magical double lines, plus signs or "yes" answers announced on your abode pregnancy exam. But before you get to that bespeak, yous'll have to navigate the drugstore aisles to choose the one you like best.

I question you lot might accept: Are inexpensive pregnancy tests whatever different from expensive ones? Not really. All home pregnancy tests piece of work the aforementioned manner — past measuring the levels of the pregnancy hormone hCG — and are upwards to 99 percent accurate if yous follow the instructions.

Some pricier tests might be more sensitive to hCG than others, or work a little faster. But residue assured, whether you choose a $5 or $25 exam, your results will exist as accurate.

Brush up on your pregnancy hormone knowledge

Your hormones will exist to blame for pretty much every pregnancy symptom you lot'll experience for the adjacent 9 months or so — which is why it makes sense to familiarize yourself with some of the major pregnancy players.

Stuffy nose? Credit all that extra estrogen, which is helping the uterus grow and baby's organs form. Facial fuzz sprouting? Thank prolactin, which helps enlarge your breasts and kickstarts lactation.

Achy back and joints? That would be the handiwork of the hormone relaxin, which (truthful to its name), helps loosen the muscles, joints and ligaments in your body to prepare for labor.

Are those signs of formulation...or simply PMS?

Early pregnancy signs — like bloating, fatigue and tender breasts — are remarkably similar to PMS symptoms and tin can announced the week earlier your terminal menstruum arrives.

Other symptoms, similar a consistently creamy vaginal discharge or an elevated basal body temperature (BBT), are usually signs of pregnancy, but can be tricky to notice.

1 symptom that merely appears during pregnancy: a change in your areola's color or size (they'll look darker or wider).

Wait for signs of ovulation

Be an ovulation detective. At peak fertility — which, depending on how long your menstrual wheel lasts, is 11 to 21 days from the beginning day of your terminal menstruation — your cervical mucus increases and becomes thinner, gooey and slippery.

To figure out when you lot're ovulating, you can use an at-home exam called an ovulation predictor kit, which works by measuring the levels of luteinizing hormone (LH) in your urine.

Other signs of ovulation to lookout out for include slightly lower basal trunk temperature (that then rises again), light spotting, cramps in your lower belly and an increased sex bulldoze.

From the What to Expect editorial team and Heidi Murkoff, writer ofWhat to Expect When Yous're Expecting. What to Expect follows strict reporting guidelines and uses only credible sources, such as peer-reviewed studies, academic research institutions and highly respected health organizations. Acquire how we keep our content authentic and upwardly-to-date by reading our medical review and editorial policy.

  • What to Expect Before Yous're Expecting, 2d edition, Heidi Murkoff.
  • What to Await When You're Expecting, 5th edition, Heidi Murkoff.
  • WhatToExpect.com, Ovulation Symptoms, September 2020.
  • WhatToExpect.com, 9 Early Signs of Pregnancy Before a Missed Flow, February 2020.
  • WhatToExpect.com, How to Use Ovulation Test Strips to Predict Your Most Fertile Days, April 2020.
  • WhatToExpect.com, Pregnancy Tests, September 2020.
  • WhatToExpect.com, What Is the Difference Between Cheap and Expensive Pregnancy Tests?, April 2020.
  • WhatToExpect.com, Cervical Mucus and Pregnancy, April 2020.
  • WhatToExpect.com, Back Hurting During Pregnancy, Jan 2020.
  • WhatToExpect.com, Are Herbs Safe for Pregnancy Symptoms?, May 2021.
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