{"id":5266,"date":"2024-04-30T09:01:37","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T09:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=5266"},"modified":"2024-04-30T09:23:00","modified_gmt":"2024-04-30T09:23:00","slug":"the-first-six-weeks-of-pregnancy-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=5266","title":{"rendered":"The First Six Weeks of Pregnancy, Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Florida is set to ban abortions after six weeks. Experts explain how that can often be before a woman knows she is pregnant.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

By the time a woman is considered six weeks pregnant, she would have had two weeks, at most, to realize it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the gestational age of a fetus is counted not from the moment that sperm fertilizes an egg or from the moment you have a positive pregnancy test, but weeks earlier, on the first day of the previous menstrual cycle. This means that just two weeks after a missed period, a woman is six weeks pregnant, said Dr. Dawnette Lewis, director of Northwell Health\u2019s Center for Maternal Health in New York and a maternal fetal medicine specialist.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s if someone has a typical menstrual cycle, which lasts about four weeks. But several factors \u2014 including stress, perimenopause and certain health conditions \u2014 can make the menstrual cycle so unpredictable that it could take longer than six weeks for someone to realize they might be pregnant.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople come in and they\u2019re like, \u2018I\u2019ve always had irregular periods and I just thought I was gaining weight\u2019 and lo and behold, they are pregnant,\u201d said Dr. Shruthi Mahalingaiah, a fertility doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of environmental and reproductive health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n
\n

The question of how soon it\u2019s possible to detect and confirm a pregnancy has come into focus as new abortion restrictions have been enacted in 21 states<\/a>, including in Florida, where a ban on abortion after six weeks is set to take effect May 1, making it the third state to do so.<\/p>\n

We asked experts to explain how the first six weeks of pregnancy unfold, and what factors might make a pregnancy hard to detect.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.<\/p>\n

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into<\/a>\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0for all of The Times.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.<\/p>\n

Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Florida is set to ban abortions after six weeks. Experts explain how that can often be before a woman knows she is pregnant.By the time a woman is considered six weeks pregnant, she would have had two weeks, at most, to realize it.That\u2019s because the gestational age of a fetus is counted not from the moment that sperm fertilizes an egg or from the moment you have a positive pregnancy test, but weeks earlier, on the first day of the previous menstrual cycle. This means that just two weeks after a missed period, a woman is six weeks pregnant, said Dr. Dawnette Lewis, director of Northwell Health\u2019s Center for Maternal Health in New York and a maternal fetal medicine specialist.That\u2019s if someone has a typical menstrual cycle, which lasts about four weeks. But several factors \u2014 including stress, perimenopause and certain health conditions \u2014 can make the menstrual cycle so unpredictable that it could take longer than six weeks for someone to realize they might be pregnant.\u201cPeople come in and they\u2019re like, \u2018I\u2019ve always had irregular periods and I just thought I was gaining weight\u2019 and lo and behold, they are pregnant,\u201d said Dr. Shruthi Mahalingaiah, a fertility doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of environmental and reproductive health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.The question of how soon it\u2019s possible to detect and confirm a pregnancy has come into focus as new abortion restrictions have been enacted in 21 states, including in Florida, where a ban on abortion after six weeks is set to take effect May 1, making it the third state to do so.We asked experts to explain how the first six weeks of pregnancy unfold, and what factors might make a pregnancy hard to detect.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5268,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5266"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5269,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5266\/revisions\/5269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}