This is by no means a medical reference, but my own report of the symptoms suffered by me and my friends and family. I hope you will find comfort in our suffering. It is a work-in-progress.
Symptoms occuring throughout pregnancy
- Heightened emotions; crying at the simplest thing
- Gastro-intestinal disorders, including gas and heartburn
- Shortness of breath
- General achiness
- Clumsiness
- Frequent urination
- Insomnia
- Heightened sense of smell
- General irrationality
- the "nesting" impulse, often manifested in the desire to move, buy a house, remodel, garden, sew, scrapbook, or clean obsessively
- Forgetfulness
- Clumsiness
- Water retention
- More sensitive, often bleeding gums
- "Feminine odor"
- Increase or change in cervical fluid (a.k.a. "discharge")
- Aversions to certain foods
- Cravings for other foods (often changing throughout pregnancy)
1st trimester symptoms
- Sore breasts
- Shortness of breath
- Growing breasts
- Nausea, with or without actual vomiting
- Exhaustion
- Headaches or migraines
- Sudden and severe aversions to certain foods or smells
2nd and 3rd trimester symptoms
- Swelling in fingers, toes, and other extremities
- Overwhelming sexual desire or complete lack of interest in sex
- Veins visible on breasts, stomach, thighs
- Coccydynia; a.k.a. pain in your tailbone that feels as if you've bruised it
- Decreased circulation; your fingers, hands, feet and other extremities fall asleep much more easily
- Nonstop hunger
- Strange, vivid dreams
- Desire to look up ex-boyfriends (hey, it's happened to a bunch of us, it must be a pregnancy symptom!)
Labor symptoms
- Pain in your lower back, shooting around throughout your uterus
- The release of your "mucus plug", a big mess of mucus and blood about the size of the cotton plug from a bottle of aspirin
- A heightening of the nesting impulse, taken to the obsessive-compulsive high point
- Diarrhea and/or nausea
- Lack of interest in eating solid foods, sometimes preceded by overwhelming hunger
- Suddenly increasing cervical fluid
