How “Baby” Changes The Body: See The Power Of Pregnancy
rachana c Twenty seventeen says Rachana Chandrasekhar is a content writer at IncNut Digital. Of course, twenty twelve thought she'd be a vegetable vendor in an Italian countryside. Don't be too overwhelmed if twenty twenty finds her basking in the raptures of driving the fastest car on some obscure racing course.
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Don’t you all know that delivering a baby is painful (“painful” is an understatement)? Don’t you also know that you will have to put up with nausea, cramps, pains, cravings, mood swings (and I can go on with this)? And don’t you know that you will have to do this for the next nine months? And with certain changes to the above list, you also know that some of them might continue for the rest of your life while your baby grows along with you. Oh! You know it so well! What then, doesn’t stop you from having a child? You got an answer to this question? Then that is it. That’s The Power Of Pregnancy.
Well, since you are anyway prepared for the beautifully painful repercussions of your pregnancy, read the changes that are going to take place in your body while your little one is kicking all the way from inside your tummy. Being aware is one of the best ways to cope with changes, physiological or emotional. See, what all your baby is already doing!
1. Abdominal Changes
Let us begin with the apparent and obvious changes. Doesn’t it start with the abdomen? Yes, the first visible change in the body is your growing belly. Depending on your structure and the number of pregnancies you have had before the present one, the rate at which your belly starts showing differs. It is approximately from the 12th week that the stomach starts growing and showing. Nonetheless, the average period is 20 weeks after which your doctor actually begins to measure numerically how much change is there in the belly size. Towards the end of your pregnancy, between 29 to 36 weeks, your belly is almost up to 6 inches from your navel. To accommodate this growth, the ligaments in the abdomen stretch quite a lot. This causes discomfort and pain on either of the sides.
2. Changes In The Musculo-Skeletal System
The shifts in the skeletal system are not visible to us directly, but the implications of these changes are visible. Wondering what? I’m talking about that typical walking style of pregnant women. Their hunched backs and arched shoulders are primarily because of the shift in the center of gravity in women bearing a child. When the uterus grows, it moves the center of gravity upwards. To compensate for that shift in gravity, the spinal column undergoes a forward flexion and gives that hunched appearance. Also, there is decreased anchorage in the joints apart from reduced overall balance of the body. This arching and hunching is essentially a mechanism adopted by the body to push the center of the gravity back to its original position to ensure safety and balance.
3. Cardiac Changes
During pregnancy, your cardiovascular system also changes drastically. As early as in the 8th week, your cardiac output increases by 20% (1). This means that your heart now has to pump more blood per minute than what was pumped before pregnancy. Also, another significant change seen in the vascular system is the peripheral vasodilation. All the arteries and tiny capillaries present in your body’s extremities dilate because the walls of the muscles relax more than the standard range during pregnancy. By the end of gestation, the cardiac output increases by a massive 70-80%. However, just an hour before delivery, there is a rapid fall in the cardiac output. Your body experiences a roller coaster of cardiac changes, and this can result in murmurs and fluctuating pulse which causes inconvenience but is considered natural during the gestation period.
4. Respiratory Changes
To cater to the increased oxygen demand of the growing fetus, the lungs now have to supply more oxygen than before. This causes an increase in the respiratory rate. Simply put, the number of times you breathe per minute increases. One of the notable discomforts that mothers-to-be go through is shortness of breath. The uterus enlargement that occurs in pregnancy increases the load on the diaphragm and makes it difficult for breathing movements inside the body. All these changes in the respiratory processes in the body makes it difficult for pregnant women to perform activities like walking and other aerobic exercises.
5. Hormonal Changes
Nausea and vomiting—two things that take a toll on all pregnant women. The rise in the hCG hormone is said to be responsible for this problem (2). The Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG) hormone is primarily helpful to form the placenta. The first 10 weeks of pregnancy witnesses a doubling of hCG hormone levels every 2 days. Also, the hormones progesterone and estrogen increase multifold during pregnancy. In fact, the amount of estrogen produced across the span of one pregnancy is more than what a female body produces in its entire lifetime. Essentially, these two hormones which were initially secreted by the corpus luteum are now released by the placenta. The placenta becomes the temporary endocrine system until the pregnancy period is over. These hormones also tend to make the breasts bigger and tender to accommodate for lactation after the delivery. Another important hormone oxytocin is also released during pregnancy which helps in relaxing the cervix to prepare the body for a delivery and also stimulates milk production for lactation.
6. Skin, Nails, And Hair
Speaking of skin, one of the most visible changes that occur in your skin is the formation of stretch marks. You could experience stretch marks on your belly, hips, buttocks apart from the breasts (3). The stretch marks could appear in red, brown or even purple color but the color soon wears off after pregnancy. The placenta increases the melanocyte stimulating hormone which in turn is responsible for the darkening of the nipples. This is also responsible for the formation of a dark longitudinal line from the pubis to the umbilicus. However, this too vanishes after few months post delivery. And coming to hair, many women experience thicker and stronger hair during pregnancy. In fact, there’s no actual growth, but it is just that due to estrogen, the shedding of the hair becomes slower and therefore gives that thick appearance. Your hair will resume its usual growing patterns once the delivery is done. In some cases, women experience more hair fall after the delivery. Also, many of you might not experience such drastic changes in the texture of hair and skin.
7. Emotional Changes
Now that you know about the significant changes that take place in your body, isn’t it quite obvious as to why you experience these moods that are constantly somersaulting? Your mood swings could be attributed not just to the hormonal fluctuations or the physical changes alone, but also to the anticipatory mixed feelings that you go through during pregnancy. There could be fear, anger, and sadness on one side and happiness, joy, and affection on the other side. You might experience fear because you are apprehensive about the well-being of your newborn, or anger because you have to put up with so many changes in the body and life, in general. You could experience all of this at the same time, and it could be overwhelming for you to tolerate. Seeking the help of your partner and the doctor is advisable when you feel you cannot take in all of it anymore.
And yet, pregnancy is one of the most special phases of womanhood where there’s pain, there’s transition, there’s sacrifice, and beyond everything, there’s ecstasy of giving life to a new little being that grows within you as you! What do you think is the power of pregnancy? I’d like it to come from you – comment below and let me know!
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