Your Pregnancy: Week 4 for Mom
By: ePregnancy
It’s test time!
No, this isn’t a pop quiz – it means that by your fourth week, if you usually have a regular period, you’ve skipped yours. You should have enough of those glorious pregnancy hormones (the same ones that will later cause you preggo brain) to get a positive reading on a home pregnancy test, or three as the case may be.
If you've tested positive, your darling blastocyst is two weeks old and has snuggled itself even deeper into your uterine lining. Your amniotic cavity is starting to take shape and that all-important placenta is also beginning to form.
If you've peed on the stick with an inconclusive result, don't despair. It's still very early; there is a possibility that the hormones just aren't showing up in high enough levels to register on the home test. Wait a week or two and if you still haven't gotten your period, test again.
We know it's frustrating to receive a negative result when you are trying to conceive. If this is your first time trying, keep in mind that it can take a few months for everything to fall in place, especially if you've been on hormonal birth control up to this point. (Note to Depo Provera users: it's not unusual for it to take up to a year to conceive once you stop the injections.) If you've been trying for a while and are still having trouble conceiving, put in a call to your doctor. In most cases, there is just a simple hormone imbalance preventing conception or implantation. And, if this isn't what's causing the problem, your doctor will work with you to figure out what is going on.
Due Dialect: Pregnancy Hormones
You will become very familiar with all of the following hormones over the next nine months -- here's a quick overview:
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Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) - stimulates your ovaries to produce progesterone until the placenta is formed; may be the culprit of such symptoms as frequent bathroom trips, morning sickness and fatigue.
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Progesterone - considered to be the "hormone of pregnancy" and has many important roles: it appears to decrease your immune response to allow your body to prepare for implantation; it inhibits lactation during pregnancy, and when progesterone levels drop after delivery, your body is triggered to produce milk; a drop in progesterone levels may be one step that facilitates the onset of labor.
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Estrogen - regulates progesterone production; plays a vital role in fetal development: it triggers the maturation of reproductive organs; helps develop sexual characteristics; regulates bone density; and it protects female fetuses from the effects of androgens in the mother's system.
There are many other secondary hormones that will affect you over the course of your pregnancy: calcitonin, thyroxine, relaxin, oxytocin, and prolactin among them. Your doctor can give you more specific information on all of these vital chemicals.