Find information about being three weeks pregnant. In the third week of your pregnancy it’s a game of wait and see. It’s too early to take a pregnancy test, so hold your breath, cross your fingers and hope that nature’s magic is taking place inside your body.
By the third week of your cycle you should have ovulated. There is a small window of between 12-24 hours after your egg has been released in which fertilisation can take place. This is why having sex a few days before and during ovulation is so important.
Conception takes place in the fallopian tube, where a successful sperm will break through the lining of the egg. The fertilised egg will then split into two cells, then four, and so on and so on, and slowly make its way to your uterus where it releases enzymes that eat away at the uterine lining so it can burrow its way in and make itself as secure as possible. By the end of the week your embryo will be made up of 500 cells. Talk about speedy development!
Your physical pregnancy changes
- There is no way of telling when an egg has been fertilised – you won’t feel anything and it won’t show up on a test straight away. Pretty much all you can do is wait patiently, but you may experience a couple of early signs of pregnancy.
- About a third of women experience implantation bleeding around nine days after conception, when their fertilised egg embeds itself in the lining of the uterus. This spotting looks like a light pink or brownish discharge.
- Some women may start to experience the very first signs of morning sickness in this week as hormonal changes start to make you more sensitive to certain factors, and your sense of smell and taste are heightened.
- After implantation, your body will start to produce the pregnancy hormone hCG. While you’ll be dying to take a home pregnancy test, it’s unlikely you’ll get a definitive result just yet.
Your health and fitness during pregnancy
Keep taking that folic acid because it will help keep a developing foetus healthy. Folic acid, or B9 as it’s also known, helps to:
- Produce DNA, and is also a key component in spinal fluid
- Prevent the chances of miscarriage
- Prevent neural tube birth defects, such as spina bifida. Around 2.5 in every 10,000 babies born in Australia each year are born with a neural tube defect.
If you have any appointments with doctors or dentists, warn them that you could be pregnant. X-rays can be harmful to the early development of a foetus so it’s better to be safe than sorry. The same goes for pesticides, poisons and harsh chemicals that you may come in contact with.
Your week 3 pregnancy checklist
- Start playing the waiting game!
- Keep yourself occupied to take your mind off things – try to go about your business, pamper yourself and try to relax.
- Get prepared by buying a pregnancy test for the following week. Only if you can trust yourself not to use it before that though!
- Invest in a box of tissues – you might find yourself getting strangely teary watching human-interest stories on the evening news.
- Keep your fingers (and toes) firmly crossed.
Learn when to take a pregnancy test, and discover what happens during your fourth week of pregnancy in the next Woolworths Baby and Toddler Club’s basic guides.