You may be reading this page before you know you are pregnant. Perhaps, you are actively trying to get pregnant. Or, perhaps you had an intuitive experience letting you know you were pregnant before missing your menstrual period.
Let’s begin with an intention to nurture a healthy body fully ready to receive and grow a baby! That may mean drinking pure water, skipping alcohol, vaping/smoking, and sugary foods, and going to sleep between 10 and 11 pm. Yep, these and other good habits are proven for health,
The moment of fertilization may occur just hours after unprotected, heterosexual sex when both the male and female partners are fertile, or after artificial insemination when the ripe egg receives the sperm.
Chemical changes in the body begin to respond immediately. (Which is why some rare people know they are pregnant immediately.) Pregnancy has begun.
In the first two weeks after fertilization the two egg and sperm cells are rapidly dividing and creating vital foundations for human development. The fertilized and developing egg divides into two cells, then four, and so on until a sphere of cells, called the morula, enters the uterus at the end of the first two weeks.
Conception occurs in the womb when the nestles into the fluffy, nutritious lining of the uterus. The “fertilized egg” is now a ball of cells about to divide further into specific layers of the body, and into a placenta.
The third week of cellular life is often hidden in the secret folds of the uterine lining, but much is going on. Signals from chemical reactions of these cells go out to the pregnant brain and body changing hormones and allowing dozens of detailed changes to support pregnancy. The ball of cells, the morula, quickly advances through a process of folding. Directions on how this folding occurs to form the systems of the body are so mysterious and subtle that we little understand how this “magic” occurs. The wisdom of human development is beyond our understanding!
To mark the weeks of pregnancy, we use the first day of your last period — not the date of ovulation, fertilization, sex, or insemination. This means that the measure for the first two weeks of pregnancy starts before you got pregnant! Talk about quantum thinking.
