If you are trying to start a family, you might be wondering what pregnancy will feel like. Personally, when I was trying to get pregnant, I always wondered if I would be able to tell once I conceived. What does it feel like to be pregnant? Would I get that special intuition that some women talk about?
As it turns out, the symptoms were there right away, but I didn’t know what to look for. A few days after we conceived (as we calculated later once we had our ultrasound), we went on a camping trip with some friends. Now I went up first with my girlfriends since my husband could not get off work early, so I was helping set up the campsite and prepare dinner. About an hour before he was set to arrive, I started feeling very sad that he wasn’t there. I became very emotional and sort of hid in my tent from everyone else. Looking back that is far from normal behavior for me. In fact, even my friends noticed and wondered what was going on! Then, that evening and the following day, my best friend kept cracking jokes at how much food I was eating. She had good reason to. My appetite grew like you would not believe! Everyone was probably wondering why I was pigging out at every meal. Then there were the naps. I am not a nap person, in general, but on that camping trip I took 3 hour naps in the tent every afternoon. I was really exhausted. When we went on a hike, I could not finish; I had to turn around and go back on level ground rather that continue up the cliff. The most glaring sign of all was the single incident of spotting. For some reason I didn’t think too much of it at the time. I thought it was my period on its way. As it turns out, it was about 6 or 7 days after conception and it was implantation spotting! When we got back from our camping trip, I took a pregnancy test and it was positive.
I did not experience any of the other classic pregnancy symptoms, such as morning sickness, until I was about 6 weeks pregnant, which was two or three weeks after I got the positive test result. Besides the fatigue and the increased appetite, I felt completely normal. I never did get any type of intuition. I was actually convinced my period was coming after that spotting, so I was shocked when I saw the test was positive.
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