Pregnancy

Pregnancy is an exciting and worrying time. There are limitations on what you can eat, how you can exercise and your racing hormones can play havoc with your body. In this section you can find advice on everything from conception to what to take to hospital. Pregnancy is the carrying of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, inside the uterus of a female human. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or triplets. Human pregnancy is the most studied of all mammalian pregnancies. Obstetrics is the medical field that studies and treats pregnant patients. Childbirth usually occurs about 38 weeks from fertilization, i.e., approximately 40 weeks from the start of the last menstruation. Thus, pregnancy lasts about nine months, although the exact definition of the English word “pregnancy” is a subject of controversy. For most women, the first sign of pregnancy is when their periods stop. Although the absence of menstruation can be caused by many things if, in addition, a woman's breasts feel swollen or tender and she feels nauseous - especially in the morning - it is likely that she is pregnant. Conception takes place around the time of ovulation when the egg is released from the ovary. Ovulation takes place midway through the menstrual cycle, on about the 14th day if the first day of menstruation is taken as day one. The beginning of a pregnancy is calculated from the first day of the last period. A normal pregnancy will last 40 weeks in total and it is not too difficult to estimate the date on which a woman can expect to give birth. If, for example, the first day of her last period was April 1, add one week - April 8. Then add nine months to find the date of the birth. In this case it will be January 8 the following year. But for an accurate prediction, the period must have occurred regularly with approximately four weeks between the last two periods.