Pregnancy Calendar: 1 Week Pregnant

Your Pregnancy: Week 1

This week’s period may be the last one you have for a good long while. Enjoy it! OK, maybe not enjoy it, but at least appreciate the fact that if it weren’t for that egg-dropping, uterine-thickening, blood-shedding cycle you love to loathe every month, you wouldn’t be able to grow the baby you’re hoping to conceive! Yes, for once you can consider Aunt Flo a friend of yours.

Wondering what else is up this week with your body and that baby you’re trying to make? Read on …

What You’re Thinking:

“Goodbye menstrual cramps, period panties and chocolate cravings! Hello pregnancy cramps, preggy panties and even bigger chocolate cravings!”

Your Body

For the first two weeks of your pregnancy, you won’t actually be pregnant. Yep, you heard that right. When your doctor or midwife calculates your due date, she will count 40 weeks from the first day of your last period, not from the day the baby was actually made (usually around Day 14).

While you’re on your period, the uterus is shedding its lining and an egg (the egg!) is preparing to launch into your fallopian tube, hoping to hook up with one lucky, fast-swimming sperm.

If you’re planning on getting preggers, now would be a good time to put the kibosh on all those bad habits like smoking, drug use and drinking. You’ll also want to start taking a prenatal vitamin with folic acid—a B vitamin that prevents brain and neural-tube birth defects. It works best if you take it before you conceive and in the early days of pregnancy, although you’ll want to continue until Junior makes his debut in nine months (and beyond if you’re breastfeeding).

Your Baby

While this is technically considered the first week of your pregnancy, baby is still only a glimmer in your eye (and an egg in your ovary). The first day of your period is considered Day 1 of the 280 days of your pregnancy even though conception won’t occur for another 14 days or so (we know, it’s totally confusing).