The Placenta (Things We Don’t Know about Pregnancy Series #4)

The placenta is a complex and poorly understood organ. Found in placental mammals, it forms during pregnancy, starts to break up in the last few weeks, and is normally expelled within 30 minutes of the birth. Looking at it, it’s easy to feel intimidated by this mysterious, massive, living thing that is birthed and dies when your baby is birthed.

Placenta via Wikipedia Commons.

 

What is the placenta anyway?

The placenta is a two-sided disc. On the one side, the maternal placenta (stuck to the womb) develops from the mother’s tissues 7-12 days after conception; on the other, the foetal placenta forms 17-22 days after conception from the blastocyst after it burrows into and connects up with the mother’s blood supply. Scientists are still studying how the placenta forms.

Bizarre symptoms (Things We Don’t Know about Pregnancy Series #3)

For many women, pregnancy is a medley of bizarre and persistent symptoms – some well known, like morning sickness, and some… less so.

A missed period

Missing a period is a pregnancy symptom… but not every woman gets it! Some continue having “periods” for one, two, or more months. Whilst they are not truly menstruating, doctors can’t explain every bleed. Common explanations are implantation bleeding (when the embryo embeds into the uterus lining), subchorionic haematoma (where blood collects between the placenta and uterus lining), or miscarriage. Minor causes might be tears, inflammation, or infections. Around 1 in 5 women experience some kind of bleeding during pregnancy^[1].

Pregnant woman via Pixabay.

Weight (Things We Don’t Know about Pregnancy Series #2)

If you’re pregnant and you’ve been reading books, boards and information sites, like me, you’ve probably got the wrong end of the stick about some things – such as weight. And the reason is this: having a baby in the UK is very different from having a baby in the US, and the US dominates these platforms.

Partly, this is because the NHS is unforthcoming: they don’t share information about being pregnant until you are. Their websites offer the bare minimum; their leaflets aren’t much better; they don’t answer my emails; and their advice is always to talk to your midwife. As mine explained to me, information is drip-fed as you progress to “prevent you from being bombarded”. Or, in other words, to maintain control over information access.

Meanwhile, the US sites would lead you to believe that medical health professionals are obsessed with monitoring, managing, and manipulating your weight gain throughout pregnancy, including berating you if you gain too little weight or, more emphatically, if you gain too much.

Diagram of weight versus gestational age by Yehudamalul via Wikipedia Commons.

Morning Sickness (Things We Don’t Know about Pregnancy Series #1)

Recently, I’ve needed to take a lie down after every meal. This isn’t because I have a food baby – it’s because I’m having an actual baby, and that’s when morning sickness really hits me.

Numbers vary, but reports suggest two thirds or more women will experience some sort of morning sickness – which can include vomiting, nausea, food aversions, and feeling “under the weather”.

Most women get it between weeks 6 and 14 in the first trimester of pregnancy, but some get it earlier, have it fade sooner, or suffer it for most of the 9 months they are carrying. Some never get it. Some women suffer all hours of the night and day (I like to think the objectionable term “morning sickness” refers not to a propensity to suffer only in the mornings, but to the sickness as the “beginning” or “dawn” of pregnancy or motherhood), and some find it comes and goes throughout the day or even week to week. Some get it at specific times of day, or have it triggered by brushing their teeth, particular foods, or particular smells (I didn’t think smell affected me until someone walked past me on a train with one of those heavily processed Cornish pasties!). Unfortunately, we don’t know what causes morning sickness, nor why it varies so much woman to woman.

What causes morning sickness? Image via Wikipedia Commons.