The question of "Could I be pregnant or not?" is often one you'd like answered right away. While the early signs of pregnancy can be indicators that you may be baking a baby bun, nothing can confirm or deny your pregnancy like a missed period. But, for many of us, waiting the 2 weeks or more it can take from ovulation/conception to a missed period can be excruciating. So, to pass the time, we look for those early signs of pregnancy!

While the very early signs of pregnancy can look a lot like PMS, sometimes when you see a few of them together, or experience others that aren't usually present during a "normal" menstrual cycle, these signs can serve as an indicator of pregnancy. The early signs of pregnancy include symptoms like bloating, fatigue, sore and tender breasts, nausea or vomiting, and increased sensitivity to odors. If you have been practicing Natural Family Planning, another one of the early signs of pregnancy is that your basal body temperature will stay high and not dip back down as it normally would after ovulation.

Although the early signs of pregnancy do resemble how you may feel right before your period, they are often exaggerated when you are pregnant. So if, for example, your breasts often get sore for a day or two near the time you begin menstruation, the breast soreness/tenderness of pregnancy may last a bit longer, be more intense or possibly both. The other thing to remember about these early signs of pregnancy is that not all women will experience all of them, and some experience none of them before or after their missed period. And while the majority of women who are pregnant will eventually experience some of these very early signs of pregnancy, it isn't until they are 4+ weeks along that these symptoms will present themselves, which is after you would have missed your period.

So, while you can use these early signs of pregnancy as a guide, there is no way to know for sure if you are pregnant or not until you've missed your period and can then get a reliable result from a pregnancy test (usually the first day of a missed period). Before you know it, you'll be sure if you are pregnant or not, but until then these early signs of pregnancy can help you make playing the waiting game a bit easier.