Early Pregnancy Signs & Symptoms From 1 to 14 DPO 2024

Pregnancy is a beautiful and natural thing for any woman who has the ability and is ready to experience it. How does one know she is pregnant? 

Many symptoms might indicate pregnancy. These symptoms might range from the usual missing of your period to more unlikely ones, like changes in blood pressure.

You can do a pregnancy test after missing your period, which generally happens at 14 DPO (DPO meaning days past ovulation). However, pregnancy blood tests^[1] can help determine if you are pregnant even at 10 DPO. Apart from, or before you can do a test, there are early signs and symptoms that you might experience a few days after ovulation that may indicate you are pregnant.

Symptoms From 1 to 14 DPO

Pinning down pregnancy symptoms^[2] after ovulation day can be very tricky, especially since not all women experience the same symptoms early on. Most women do not get very early signs of pregnancy, two weeks into conception.

The most common early pregnancy symptom for women is a missed period. For a normal pregnancy, the time from ovulation until a missed period is consistent among most women, about 14 days. 

Thus, if you’re sure of your timing and your period hasn’t begun by 14 DPO, it’s a pregnancy till proven otherwise. This is consistent with being two weeks after ovulation, or about 10 days after conception, which happens a few days after ovulation.

The ovary’s ovulation begins with a small follicle in which the egg develops. That follicle can swell, irritating the nerves going to the ovary, and causing one-sided pelvic pain that is sharp. 

At ovulation, if releasing the egg were to tear through a small vein, blood can leak into the pelvis, which is also irritating. That sharp pain would be replaced–just over a couple of hours–with a dull, burning sensation over the entire pelvis.

From 0 to 5 DPO

During the first 5 DPO, the embryo implantation may not have occurred yet; thus, women rarely get pregnancy symptoms. 

Most of the symptoms the woman may experience at this point are more reflective of their menstrual cycle and things associated with ovulation than due to pregnancy.

From 6 to 10 DPO

The woman is medically pregnant after a fertilized egg has been implanted in the uterus. Implantation occurs from about three DPO to six DPO for most women. One of the earliest signs that people experiencing pregnancy symptoms may get is spotting or light bleeding, This may be due to implantation bleeding from implantation into the uterine tissue. 

It may also be due to a slight delay in progesterone support to keep that lining intact that can occur between the time the luteal phase begins and the time when it is directed,  hormonally, to continue. 

According to The American Pregnancy Organization^[3], about one in every four pregnant women experience implantation bleeding, which some interpret as having a period. They’re mistaken. No period can occur during pregnancy

Any light bleeding typically lasts from a few hours to two days and is usually light in flow. Even light bleeding is not a guarantee of pregnancy, and even at this point, most will not get a positive pregnancy test result.

It is important to note that several other reasons apart from implantation may cause a similar bleeding experience. One such reason could be a threatened or beginning miscarriage. Another could be a lack of synchronization of the ovary’s luteal phase progesterone and the placenta’s production of progesterone.

Immediately after implantation, the female body will start producing and releasing hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin – a pregnancy hormone).

From 10 to 14 DPO

A few days following implantation, the woman’s body may have a high enough level of hCG to facilitate symptoms of pregnancy. However, remember that some of the symptoms may be due to a pending menstrual period and not due to pregnancy. Nonetheless, some women can differentiate how their bodies usually act during their menstrual cycles and, when different, it signifies something else.

During this point, you may start noticing and experiencing pregnancy symptoms. The most common signs and symptoms of pregnancy are discussed in the following section. For many women, the hCG levels are high enough to be detected by a standard pregnancy test when symptoms become noticeable.

When to Take A Pregnancy Test?

It is advisable to take a pregnancy test immediately after you miss your period (which would generally be anywhere from 12 to 16 DPO) to determine whether or not you are pregnant). During this time, if you are pregnant, there are enough levels of the hCG to show up in a home pregnancy test kit.

For those that do not want to wait to find out if they are pregnant, there are blood pregnancy tests they can consider. However, these tests can only be done from 10 DPO (days past ovulation) onwards and not before.

The Bottom Line

It is challenging to know if you are pregnant, especially before 14 DPO. Even then, you might not be sure whether the symptoms you are experiencing are because you’re pregnant or just because of a pending menstrual period. The pregnancy symptoms timeline^[9] for most women begins from 10 to 14 DPO.

However, the most common sign is a missed period. When this happens, you should take a pregnancy test, and if the result is positive, you should visit a doctor immediately to start your prenatal clinic. If the result is negative, you should repeat it in a week.

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