Pregnancy.  How soon am I able to tell if I am pregnant?  When do most
people get morning sickness?  Is there anything extra I should be
doing while I am trying to get pregnant?  What will I need to while I
am pregnant and in the first few months of the baby's life?

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Clarification of Question by ishtar-ga on 13 May 2002 20:35 PDT

I am in New Zealand, so local information would be useful.

Hi,

In summary, You can generally test as early as the first day of your
missed period (15 days after conception) if you are pregnant. The
onset, severity and duration of morning sickness is highly variable,
but improves in most people after their first trimester. While trying
to get pregnant, be sure to take a vitamin supplement that contains
folic acid, eat right, and avoid drugs and alcohol. More details on
all four of your questions are below. All the links to products below
ship internationally, so they should be available to you in New
Zeland.

Most pregnancy tests (including those used for initial pregnancy
diagnosis in medical labs) test for Human Chorionic Gondaotropin (hCG)
concentration in your urine.

According to the Meditests website,

"Human chorionic gonadotropin is a glycopeptide hormone produced by
the placenta during pregnancy. The appearance and rapid rise in the
concentration of hCG in the woman’s urine makes it a good pregnancy
marker. Usually, concentration of hCG in urine is at least 25 mIU/ml
as early as seven to ten days after conception. The concentration
increases steadily and reaches its maximum between the eighth and
eleventh weeks of pregnancy."

http://store.yahoo.com/meditests/preghcghomur.html

Most pregnancy tests are accurate enough to detect about 80 mIU/ml,
although some tests, such as the one linked to above claim to detect
with as little as 25 mIU/ml.

I have used meditests to order pregnancy test strips and have been
very pleased with their service. They ship internationally.

For more info on hCG see also:

Infertility Information Support
http://www.inciid.org/betas.html


Morning sickness set in at about 6 weeks for me in my first pregnancy,
at three weeks in my second.

If you do have problems with morning sickness, an excellent reference
is "No More Morning Sickness" by Mariam Erick MSRD.  You can purchase
this book at amazon.com via the following link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452269830/

The author has also recently published a second book, which I have not
read, but is supposed to be quite entertaining, "Take Two Crackers and
Call Me in the Morning! A Real-Life Guide for Surviving Morning
Sickness". The link to that book at amazon is:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0961306351


While  trying to get pregnant, there are many things you can try and
do to increase your odds of conception, and to keep yourself healthy.
An excellent source of detailed info is preconception.com

http://preconception.com/

They can help you with your fertility cycles, conception tips, and
things to avoid while trying to conceive.

There are many  things you can do to improve your chances of having a
healthy baby before you conceive. Most importantly is a visit to your
obgyn. For a complete preconception checklist, visit Babyzone.com

http://www.babyzone.com/preconception/preparing.asp

As to what you might need while pregnant and for the first few months
after the baby is born, the answer to that question could (and does!)
fill several books and is beyond the scope of a Google Answer. By far
the most widely recommended resource is the excellent book "What to
Expect When You're Expecting" by Heidi E. Murkoff, et al. You can
again get this at amazon.com, here is a link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0761121323

Another great online pregnancy resource is BabyCenter.com
http://www.babycenter.com/

they can provide you with week by week updates on what to expect at
each stage of pregnancy as well as what to expect each month after the
baby is born.


Search Terms:

Preconception

Hgc

Morning sickness

Pregnancy

I hope this answers some of your many questions and raises a few more.
Best of luck with your quest to start a family!

pkp-ga

Very thorough answer with lots of useful links

For what it's worth, I disagree with the book recommendation in the
answer.  I and other mothers I know found What to Expect When You're
Expecting off-putting, both because of its preachiness and its
needlessly alarmist tone.  Some other suggestions for you (available
at Amazon.com): The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth, by Henci
Goer.  This is more of a reference than a book you read straight
through, and it provides explanations for many of the conditions and
medical procedures you will experience during pregnancy.  It does talk
about potential problems, so reading it straight through is probably
needlessly unnerving if everything is progressing smoothly, but if you
do encounter difficulty, you can get the information you need
immediately.  I also think this book provides a balanced assessment of
the different medical options you have during your pregnancy and
birth.  A recommendation for daily reading is Your Pregnancy Week by
Week, by Glade B. Curtis, MD, OB/GYN.  This book includes pictures of
your fetus' stages of development as well as information on the
changes you will experience each week.  Make sure you buy the most
recent editions of these books, because they date rather quickly.  I
would also like to recommend The Girlfriends Guide to Pregnancy, by
Vicki Iovine, who has also written Girlfriends Guides covering stages
of child development.  This book is a great read, very funny, and
provides practical advice you may not find in more medically oriented
texts.  Finally, I suggest So That's What They're For!, by Janet
Tamaro.  This is another good read, covering the basics of
breastfeeding.  Good luck to you, and congratulations!

Another book recommendation:  Taking Charge of Your Fertility, by Toni
Wechsler.

This provides lots of information on how to track your body's signals,
so you know when (and if) you are ovulating.  This is important both
so you know when to try to conceive, and also so you don't drive
yourself crazy constantly taking pregnancy tests for no reason.

After five miscarriages (and one successful full-term pregnancy), I
can tell you that morning sickness -- which actually is
any-time-of-day-or-night sickness -- is an excellent sign of a healthy
pregnancy. Researchers have discovered that women who don't suffer
much nausea tend to have higher miscarriage rates than those who toss
their cookies on a regular basis. I'm sure the researchers describe
their work in more scientific terms, but you get the idea.