What is more miraculous on this earth than giving birth to a new life. Pregnancy is said to be a beautiful new phase in a woman’s life. Amongst the two genders, a woman is blessed with the capability of bringing a new body into this world. Pregnancy has three trimesters and lasts around 40 weeks from a woman’s first day of the last period. Each pregnancy trimester is like a milestone on the way of finally delivering a baby. Pregnancy is a beautiful and life-altering experience. It brings along immense joy and excitement. Homing your baby in your womb for nine months is majestic and only a woman knows what it feels like. It is the beginning of a beautiful journey of motherhood that lasts a lifetime. Through this, a fetus’s development is measured. Each trimester has certain usual characteristics. The First Pregnancy Trimester (0-13 weeks) The most crucial time of your pregnancy journey lies in the first trimester. This is the phase when all the organs and structures begin to form from the zygote in the uterine wall. Most miscarriages and birth defects belong to this phase of pregnancy. By the end of this trimester, the embryo starts to look like a human baby. A mother’s body also goes through major changes in the first trimester. Feeling of morning sickness, nausea, indigestion, and vomiting are quite normal during this trimester. Fatigue and frequent urination are also some of the symptoms. But since everybody is different, the responses also vary from person to person. Some may feel sick at night while others feel sick all day long. Tiredness and mood swings are too a part of this time. So a woman may feel different emotions due to hormonal changes. Food cravings and a stronger sense of smell are also quite normal at this time. Your baby is too small at this time to give the mother any weight gain. But one may gain a couple of pounds during this trimester. In some cases, a mother even tends to lose weight due to a decrease in appetite. It is very important to concentrate on your eating habits at this time. Make sure to add yogurt, bananas, rich vegetables, avocadoes, and dairy products. The baby needs good nutrition for growth at this time. This is the crucial time of pregnancy, so watch out for vaginal bleeding, abdominal pain, sudden thirst, fever or vision disturbance. On the visibility of any of these issues immediately contact your doctor. The Second Pregnancy Trimester (14-26 weeks) The fetus grows from 4-5 inches to 12 inches by the end of this phase. This is said to be the ‘golden period’ of pregnancy. Some important parts start to develop. Like the bones, muscle tissue, eyebrows, skin, fingernails, toenails, blood cells, and hair. The baby even develops a fixed sleeping and waking patterns. A mother will start to feel the presence of the baby inside by different sounds and movements. This is the time when the baby bump starts to occur. A mother’s health gets better by this phase and she gets more active. Though back pain, leg cramps, constipation, and abdominal pain may disturb the expecting mother a bit. A change in the nipples’ color and stretch marks may start to appear. Odds are once the expecting mother enters the second trimester it should be smooth sailing from then. But if found symptoms like vaginal bleeding, fever, swelling on feet and hands or abdominal pain contact your doctor for assistance. The Third Pregnancy Trimester (27-40 weeks) This is the last lap of the pregnancy filled with excitement and anxiousness for the birth of the baby. The growing baby goes from 12inches to 18-20inches and weighs around 7-8lbs. The whole body structure of the baby is complete by now but the development is still happening inside. The baby will begin to take breathing motions to survive life after birth outside the mommy. Baby is pretty active at this time and the mother will feel it all the time. The full-grown belly of this trimester might make the mother uncomfortable. She may also feel back pain due to heavy belly. Other symptoms of this trimester include heartburn, swollen feet, insomnia, mood swings, breast leakage, and frequent urination. The constant care in each pregnancy trimesters is very crucial. Regularly visiting the doctor is also important to make sure everything is going just fine. Every woman’s body is different so the symptoms of each trimester may vary. But the pregnancy journey is full of new experiences, great uncertainty, and many new emotions. “The moment a child is born, the mother is born. The woman existed, but the mother never. A mother is something absolutely new.” – Osho Also, look out for these pregnancy complications before its too late.