How To Stop Thinking You Re Pregnant

Test Only When Your Period Is Late

So, You Think You’re Pregnant

Do not test too early. Take it from a girl who started testing at 5 dpo, its not worth it. Wait until you have actually missed your period! There is something about the build up, the anticipation, and excitement of taking a test that is healthier than getting worried and anxious over an early negative test.

Symptoms Of False Pregnancy

Women with pseudocyesis have many of the same symptoms as those who are actually pregnant, including:

These symptoms can last for just a few weeks, for nine months, or even for several years. A very small percentage of patients with false pregnancy will arrive at the doctor’s office or hospital with what feels like labor pains.

How Soon Can I Take A Pregnancy Test

Pregnancy tests work by detecting a certain level of human chorionic gonadotrophin in your pee. You can take a pregnancy test as soon as youve missed your period. However, its best to wait at least one week after youve missed your period to get the most accurate results. While some tests claim to give you accurate results before a missed period, taking a test too soon can result in a false negative .

Your healthcare provider can take a blood sample to test for pregnancy as early as one week before a missed period.

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If You Dont Want Children For Three Or More Years Consider An Implant Or Iud

The IUD and the implant are two forms of long-acting reversible birth control .

This means that once a LARC is put into place, youre protected against pregnancy without any additional work on your part.

IUDs and implants are over 99 percent effective, each lasting several years before needing to be replaced.

Coping With Emotions During Pregnancy

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It can be hard to think clearly or feel positive when you are feeling worried and tired. Taking good physical care of yourself, especially getting plenty of rest and sleep, may help to keep troubling emotions in proportion .

It can be helpful to eat several small, healthy meals a day and try to avoid sugary foods and fizzy drinks .

Gentle to moderate exercise can help to improve mood and general fitness in pregnancy, helping you prepare for labour and avoid some complications of pregnancy . Try to build in some activity every day. Avoid contact sports or any strenuous exercise, particularly if you werent active before your pregnancy .

Finding out about benefit entitlements, midwife appointments, how you can eat healthily in pregnancy and what you might prepare for your baby can feel overwhelming. So having a to-do list can help you get these things organised in your mind. This NHS to-do list contains lots of useful information. Maybe share your to-do list with your partner or a supportive friend or relative they might be able to offer you support in ticking some items off that list.

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What Are Some Less Common Signs Of Early Pregnancy

There are some additional signs of early pregnancy that arent as common. Just like with the most common symptoms, these signs of pregnancy may or may not happen. Its important to remember that everyone is different and experiences signs of pregnancy differently.

Less common signs of early pregnancy can include:

Nhs Therapy And Counselling Services

If you’re feeling sad and it’s not improving, a talking therapy might help.

There are different types of talking therapies for mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder .

Talking therapies include cognitive behavioural therapy and counselling.

A GP can refer you for talking treatment, or you can refer yourself directly to an NHS psychological therapies service without going to a GP. If you refer yourself, it’s a good idea to talk to a midwife or GP as well about how you’re feeling.

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What Do Experts Say About This

As you might imagine, there are a lot of opinions on this topic. The latest expert opinion is that it can be more stressful to try to conceive than not, but it is not good or bad for your chances of getting pregnant. Its generally a good idea to relax and not worry about it too much.

Despite what you may have read or heard, no evidence thinking about getting pregnant prevents pregnancy from happening. Trying to conceive through intention or visualization may even backfirefocusing on bringing pregnant can delay ovulation. So if youre not ready to have a baby, its best to keep your thoughts focused elsewhere!

Heres How Birth Control Works

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Lets review the mechanisms of how hormonal contraception works. All hormonal contraception attempts to prevent ovulation by delivering the body a steady spike of synthetic hormones. For the pill, this is delivered every 24 hours you take it. For the vaginal ring, its constantly delivered over the 21 day cycle of wearing it. For the IUD, its a constant stream of hormones being released from the device for the years while wearing it.

Hormonal contraception contains one or a combination of two forms of synthetic hormones that mimic either progesterone or estrogen. Progestin, the artificial form of progesterone, is essential to the mechanism of preventing ovulation. Therefore, all hormonal contraception contains a form of progestin. Some hormonal contraception also contains an artificial form of estrogen, such as Ethinylestradiol or Estradiol valerate . The main reason hormonal contraception contains synthetic estrogen is to mimic a real period. The bleeding you experience on these combined forms of hormonal contraception is a result of the withdrawal of synthetic estrogen during the week you take the sugar pills in your pack.

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Why You Might Feel Stressed When Your Partner Is Pregnant

Going through pregnancy and becoming a parent involves many changes often all at once.

For example, during pregnancy, you might feel stressed about things like money management, work demands, relationship problems or family conflict.

Also, you might feel overwhelmed and stressed by how much there is to learn about caring for a newborn and how this will affect time for your relationships and yourself.

How To Stop Bad Thoughts In Pregnancy

How many thoughts do you have in a single day? Experts estimate people have been between 4,000 and 7,000 thoughts each day. In pregnancy, we are more at the mercy of our thoughts, with the daily thought count closer to 8,000. It sounds an outrageous amount of thoughts running through our brain, but most of the time we are not even aware that we are thinking. In fact, it is extremely difficult to simply stop the brain from thinking. We are even thinking when we are asleep!Exercise: For a full minute stop all your thoughts. Set the timer for a minute and tell your mind not to think anything. If it does, attempt to stop the thought.

I expect this may feel like the longest minute of your life and the most frustrating. For experienced meditators this may be an easy ask, although the average untrained person will find this a super challenge. For most of us, we seem to be at the mercy of our thoughts and find it extremely difficult to have any power of them and their effect.All pregnant women have terrifying and horrifying thoughts. Babble.com says that pregnancy is a time we focus on harmful self-thoughts. It is natural to be more concerned and hypervigilant at this vulnerable time. Being pregnant, we have a desperate need to protect ourselves and our growing child, which is built within each and every cell of our being. However, we often overfeed our thoughts like an insatiable hungry beast.

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Figure Out How Likely It Is That Youre Pregnant

You can only get pregnant during ovulation, a narrow window of 5 to 6 days per month.

If you have a 28-day menstrual cycle, ovulation happens around day 14.

Your risk of pregnancy is highest in the 4 to 5 days leading up to ovulation, on the day of ovulation, and the day after ovulation.

Although an egg only lives for about 24 hours after ovulation, sperm can live up to five days inside the body.

How Common Is Anxiety In Pregnancy

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Anxiety in pregnancy is very common. More than 1 in 10 pregnant women have it. Don’t feel like you are a failure because you’re not coping.

Pregnancy can be a very emotional experience and it can sometimes be difficult to know whether your feelings are manageable or a sign of something more serious. Trust yourself. You’re the best judge of whether your feelings are normal for you. If you feel anxious a lot or have panic attacks during pregnancy its important to ask for help.

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Hormonal Changes In Pregnancy

As soon as a woman becomes pregnant, their body begins to prepare for safeguarding and maintaining the pregnancy. This increases levels of the hormones oestrogen and progesterone in their blood. Read more about what these hormones do in your body in our article about pregnancy hormones.

Higher levels of progesterone and oestrogen are important for a healthy pregnancy, but are often the cause of some common unwanted side effects. This is especially true in the first trimester.

Apart from sickness and tiredness, it’s common to have mood swings and feel tearful or easily irritated . Once the body has adapted to the higher levels of these hormones, the symptoms usually wear off. However, some women will experience them throughout their pregnancy.

Things You Need To Stop Obsessing Over When Trying To Get Pregnant

Trying to get pregnant can be stressful and focusing on these seven things will just make it worse, so make them off limits when youre trying to conceive.

May 22, 2018

Anyone who has ever struggled to get pregnant knows how much of a mindf*ck it can be. You start your cycle positive and excited, certain that this will be the month you conceive and, sadly, if it doesnt work out, you end the month cursing your period and wondering what the h*ll went wrong.

Its an emotional rollercoaster, and I have gone through it, twice. What I learned the second time around is that I made the situation worse by obsessing over certain things. At the time, I felt like so much was out of my control, but looking back, I realize that a lot of what I was anxious about was totally up to me.

If you are trying to get pregnant, give yourself a break and stop obsessing over the following:

How long does it take to get pregnant?1. TimingWhether youre trying to conceive naturally or are going through fertility treatments, it is easy to obsess over exactly where you are in your cycle. My temperature is going up! The ovulation kit says its time! According to this book/chart/nurse, this is our window of opportunity to conceive! We. Have. To. Do. It. Now. Sure, timing matters, but be mindful that obsessing over the absolute best timing can add extra pressure to you and your partner and can quickly take the sizzle out of sex and make it feel clinical, not fun.

Read more:

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How Progestin Stop Ovulation From Happening

Whether your pills contain estrogen or not, progestin does the bulk of the work in preventing pregnancy. Like real progesterone, progestin sends a negative feedback loop to the pituitary gland telling it Stop! Wait! Dont release an egg! Were busy working on something down here! Progestinlike real progesteronealso thickens cervical fluid in the cervix making it an inhospitable environment for sperm. This negative feedback loop happens naturally after ovulation in a cycle unaltered by hormonal contraception. In a natural cycle, the busy working on something is preparation for possible conception. The body doesnt want to release an egg when theres a chance one has already been fertilized.

However, unlike real progesterone, progestin doesnt act on the uterine lining or other parts of the body the same way, and women cant reap the benefits of real progesterone like mood stabilization, improved bone and heart health, and better sleep. In short, women on hormonal contraception are getting steady, low doses of either progestin or some combination of progestin and synthetic estrogen, both of which suppress the communication between the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis, which would normally be responsible for triggering the monthly release of an egg from one of the ovaries .

How Your Stress Can Affect Your Pregnant Partner And Baby

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You might think youre handling your stress or that its not affecting the people around you. But too much stress can make you upset, and it can spill over into your relationships with other people. You might be more irritable and tense with others and more likely to argue with your partner.

If you rely on alcohol or other drugs or smoking to cope with stress, you might find yourself using these more than usual. This can lead to even more tension and arguments.

If your stress levels get out of hand, it can lead to stress in your pregnant partner. And if your partner has a lot of stress, this can affect your babys health and development before and after birth.

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How Do I Know If Im Pregnant

Also keep in mind that it takes up to a few weeks for pregnancy to happen after sex. So if the sex happened a few days ago, you cant be pregnant yet in fact, you can still use emergency contraception to help prevent pregnancy if its been less than 5 days since youve had unprotected sex.

The first thing to do if you think youre pregnant is take a pregnancy test its the only way to know for sure. A pregnancy test can tell you if youre pregnant as soon as your period is late. Read more about pregnancy tests.

Early pregnancy symptoms include bloating, sore breasts, upset stomach, and feeling tired. But these symptoms can also be caused by other things, like PMS or being sick. And some people dont have symptoms at all in early pregnancy. So symptoms alone cant tell you whats going on only a pregnancy test can.

If your pregnancy test is positive, make an appointment with your doctor or local Planned Parenthood Health Center right away so you can talk about your pregnancy options and make sure you stay healthy no matter what you decide to do about your pregnancy. But be careful to go to a real health center and not a crisis pregnancy center these are fake clinics that often say they offer pregnancy tests and counseling, but they dont actually provide a full range of real health care. They wont give you honest information about your pregnancy options, and they dont have to follow privacy laws. Planned Parenthood can help you find somewhere trustworthy.

What Feelings Can Happen

Mood swings are normal during pregnancy. But if you feel nervous or down all the time, it could be a sign of something deeper going on. Stress over being pregnant, changes in your body during the pregnancy, and everyday worries can take a toll.

Some pregnant women may have depression or anxiety:

  • Depression is sadness or feeling down or irritable for weeks or months at a time. Some women may have depression before getting pregnant. But it also can start during pregnancy for a number of reasons for example, if a woman isn’t happy about being pregnant or is dealing with a lot of stress at work or at home.
  • Anxiety is a feeling of worry or fear over things that might happen. If you worry a lot anyway, many things can stress you out during pregnancy. You might worry that you won’t be a good mother or that you can’t afford to raise a baby.

Pregnant women may have other mental health issues, such as:

It’s important to treat mental health concerns during pregnancy. Mothers who are depressed, anxious, or have another issue might not get the medical care they need. They might not take care of themselves, or they may use drugs and alcohol during the pregnancy. All of these things can harm a growing baby.

If you have a mental health issue, talk with your doctor so you can get the help you need during and after your pregnancy.

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Should I Take The Morning After Pill

If a condom breaks or you forgot to take your pill a few times this month, you can take emergency contraception. In most cases, if taken within 72 hours, certain emergency contraceptive pills can help to reduce the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent.

There are a few types of emergency contraception available today Plan B, Ella, and a copper IUD. Plan B is available over the counter, while Ella requires a prescription. A copper IUD can also act as an emergency contraceptive and doubles as a long-acting form of birth control. To act as an emergency contraceptive, the IUD must be inserted within five days of unprotected sex.

A new form of emergency contraception, Julie, is FDA-approved, and like Plan B, contains the hormone levonorgestrel . Its an over-the-counter pill available exclusively at Walmart and doesnt require an ID or prescription for purchase.

Emergency contraception works by inhibiting or delaying ovulation, preventing fertilization, or preventing implantation of a fertilized egg. Unlike mifepristone , emergency contraception does not interrupt or terminate an established pregnancy it prevents pregnancy from occurring. That means if you are already pregnant, it wont work.

Emergency contraception can cause nausea for a day or so, but you can ask your provider to prescribe an anti-nausea medication. Its also not foolproof it only reduces your chance of pregnancy by 75 to 89 percent.

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