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Early Symptoms of Pregnancy

Are you pregnant? One way to tell is to look for signs — like tender breasts, fatigue, and nausea — all of which can show up a few short weeks after conception. Here's a look at the most common early symptoms of pregnancy.

Many will be similar to the feeling you get right before your period (bloating, fatigue, breast tenderness…) so it may be hard to tell whether they signal your period or motherhood. Still, if you've been TTC and you've got some (or all) of these symptoms, it may be time to pull out an HPT.

Tender, swollen breasts: That tingly, sore, and/or full feeling in your breasts is a first sign. The dazzling hormonal duo — estrogen and progesterone — deserves most of the credit (or the blame) for this breast (and nipple) tenderness. It's pain with a gain, though, since they're preparing your body for the milk-making mania to come.


Fatigue: Imagine running a daily marathon (without training) or climbing a mountain (ditto) while carrying a backpack that weighs a little more every day. That's pregnancy in a nutshell. In other words, it's hard work! During early pregnancy, a huge amount of energy goes into building a life-support system for your baby (aka the placenta). And all that baby building can zap you of your usual get-up-and-go right from the get-go.

Bleeding and cramping: Light spotting or implantation bleeding before you'd expect your period (around five to ten days after conception) is sometimes a sign that an embryo has implanted itself into the uterine wall. Some women also experience abdominal cramping in the first few weeks of pregnancy, similar to menstrual cramps. Only a small percentage of women experience implantation bleeding or cramping, however, so you can miss these symptoms and still be pregnant.

Nausea and heightened sense of smell: That tell-tale queasy feeling in your stomach, also known as morning sickness, can hit you anytime of day beginning just a few short weeks into your pregnancy. Hormones — mainly increased levels of progesterone, which causes the stomach to empty more slowly — are, again, largely to blame (though estrogen and hCG can also take some credit for your nausea). You may also develop a heightened sense of smell, making previously mild odors strong and unappealing.

Food aversions and cravings: Almost all expectant mothers experience cravings, and most experience at least one aversion as well (thanks, again, to hormones). And that's not a bad thing: Many cravings and aversions have an uncanny way of keeping you away from the bad stuff (coffee and alcohol, for example) and drawing you to the good stuff .

Frequent urination: Two to three weeks after conception you may notice an increased need to pee. This new gotta-go feeling is due to the pregnancy hormone hCG, which increases blood flow to your kidneys, helping them to more efficiently rid your body (and eventually, your baby's body) of waste. Your growing uterus (yes, it's starting to grow already!) is also beginning to put some pressure on your bladder, leaving less storage space for urine and making you head for the toilet more frequently.

Bloating: Having trouble buttoning your jeans? Early pregnancy bloating is hard to distinguish from pre-period bloat, but it's definitely something you'll feel early on (for most women, that is). You can't blame that puffy ate-too-much feeling on your baby yet, but you can blame it on the hormone progesterone, which helps slow down digestion, giving the nutrients from foods you eat more time to enter your bloodstream and reach your baby.