Even if you are in what is officially considered the first week of pregnancy, and believe it or not, you are not pregnant yet. Find out why.
First week of pregnancy. The most important:
You are in the first week of pregnancy. There is little left for ovulation, and also for you to get pregnant if you have unprotected sex.
Week 1 of pregnancy (Pregnancy has not started yet).
If you want to get pregnant, this is a great time to start taking more folic acid. It is advisable, even, is that if the pregnancy is programmed, you have started taking a supplement a few months before.
It’s still too early to take a pregnancy test. The result is very likely to be negative.
We are without any doubt faced with what many experts tend to call a wonderful countdown, in which the embryo begins to grow and develop. We have already gone through the moment of conception, precisely after the ovaries have released an egg and, after having had unprotected sexual intercourse, it has found a sperm, which has fertilized it after a long journey of 18 centimeters (which is what separates the vagina from the fallopian tube).
However, during these first days and weeks of pregnancy (up to about week 4), it is tremendously difficult and complicated to determine the time when conception occurred. That is, the exact and precise moment in which the sperm fertilized the ovum.
For this reason, a specific time of pregnancy is established based not on the moment of conception -because it is very difficult to determine-, but on the first day of the last menstrual period, and that will serve precisely as a starting point to set the 40 weeks of pregnancy (approximately 280 days), and also have an approximate or probable date of delivery. This date of the last menstrual period will be recorded in the prenatal history as UPM (date of the Last Menstrual Period).
How many weeks am I? How to calculate the week in which I am pregnant?
We must bear in mind that many experts even point out that fertilization occurs in the second week. Therefore, it is evident that we still cannot speak of pregnancy in the strict terms of the current dating system, which ultimately tends to cause so much confusion. So you actually have to wait a few more weeks for you to actually be pregnant.
That is, the weeks of pregnancy are counted from the first day of the last menstrual period. And it is evident that, at that time, you were not pregnant yet. If we also take into account that ovulation occurs 14 or 15 days after menstruation, and that it is on these days when fertilization of the egg occurs, there is actually a lag of about 14 days between the actual age of the embryo and the weeks of pregnancy.
Be that as it may, taking into account when was the first day of your last menstrual period, it is possible to establish how many weeks you are, especially if you have already had the first period. And, therefore, we must always keep in mind that the conception date is only a rough estimate.
Let’s take an example. If your last menstruation came on June 10, this information will help your gynecologist to start counting 40 weeks from this day, since fertilization occurs about 2 weeks later (15 days), and fertilization also. Starting to count on June 10, if for example today were July 14, you would find yourself in week 5 of pregnancy, which would actually be week 4 and 6 days of gestation. In addition, it is possible to establish an approximate due date: March 17 of next year.
Can I take a pregnancy test?
Since we are still in the first weeks of pregnancy, in which fertilization has not yet occurred (remember that we are 15 days late with respect to the official pregnancy date), at the moment it is not possible to perform a test to confirm pregnancy, since it is still too early and the result is very likely to be negative.
This is what usually happens when you take the test very quickly, before the first lack of menstruation.
For this reason, many gynecologists and even the manufacturers of home pregnancy tests (urine) advise to perform the test after the first absence. That is, a day or two after the time that your period should have reached you (especially if your menstrual cycle is regular).
