Women who are trying to conceive know that the journey can sometimes be very complicated and very confusing.
If you are one of them, you are probably doing extensive research to find out what happens during the two-week wait (TWW) between ovulation and your missed period, as well as what you should expect and what you need to look out for.
If you are trying to get pregnant, the best thing you can do is get familiar with your menstrual cycle and track all the changes you see over the next few weeks. However, before you start tracking all of your hormonal changes, you need to get familiar with all of the signs and symptoms and understand what is going on inside your body if you have conceived.
The journey of potential early pregnancy starts one-day post-ovulation, and here is what happens. The egg can be fertilized for up to twenty-four hours after it has been released, and if you are trying to conceive, the waiting game is on from that moment on.
Women who are trying to conceive often report that they become hyperaware of the changes their body is going through and that they pay more attention to every single little thing. Even non-symptoms start to feel like suspicious, possible-pregnancy symptoms, even if you are only at the beginning of the TWW after having sexual intercourse.
The obsessive detail orientation is justified, but is it actually useful? Can you even have any symptoms a few days past ovulation? Unfortunately, the answer is two-fold.
There are some hormonal changes that are going to happen to your body after ovulation, such as the higher level of your progesterone. However, these changes happen to your body every month, regardless of the fact whether the egg is fertilized or not, so it can be troublesome to distinguish early pregnancy symptoms from your usual PMS symptoms.
Just like previously mentioned, 1 DPO symptoms are not necessarily pregnancy symptoms. However, there are some things you should be on the lookout for and tracking:
Breast tenderness and nipple tenderness are often some of the first signs for the majority of women.
Fatigue can be caused by big changes that are going on in your body.
After ovulation, your body is going to be directing more blood towards the uterus, which can throw things out of balance and cause some major headaches.
If you are experiencing some cramping and pain in your pelvis, abdomen, or lower back 1 DPO, it is a completely normal occurrence that is often caused by ovulation itself.
If you are feeling sad one minute and euphoric the next, you are experiencing mood swings caused by rushing hormones.
After ovulation, your cervical mucus might become thicker and stickier than it was during ovulation.
High progesterone levels and slower digestion are linked, and they can cause gas, nausea, and bloating.
If you are indeed pregnant, your actual pregnancy symptoms will not start before your body actually recognizes that there is a fertilized egg and that it needs to start making a cocktail of hormones that prepare the body to care for the fetus.
However, tracking your symptoms during the TWW can be interesting, and it can help your gyno get a clearer picture of your journey.
If you are noticing some of the symptoms mentioned and described above, it is only natural to wonder if it is possible to feel pregnant (and know that you are) only one-day post ovulation.
Unfortunately, there is no clear answer; every pregnancy experience is different and unique in its own way. You might have always been experiencing these same symptoms every month, but you have not been paying such close attention to them because conceiving was not on your mind then.
The longer the symptoms stick around, the higher is the chance that you are pregnant. However, the only way you can be sure that you are pregnant is to wait the necessary two weeks and take the pregnancy test in about 14 days.
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