Don’t you just love it when your body tells you one thing but a pregnancy test tells you something else? Yeah… didn’t think so! 😉

Tired? Nauseous? Cramping? Sore Boobs?

Unfortunately, our bodies are pretty cruel when it comes to interpreting the signs and symptoms of early pregnancy and PMS-like symptoms; they’re pretty much identical!

Your egg could have fertilized… but that doesn’t mean you’re pregnant just yet. The embryo has to develop for a few days and then find a good nesting spot inside your uterus before you’re officially pregnant.

But as soon as the embryo has implanted, it sends out the hormone hCG. It’s what we test for using pregnancy tests and that’s how we officially find out that we’re pregnant.

The vast majority of embryos that implant, do so between 8 and 10 days past ovulation (DPO). So any symptoms you experience the first week after ovulation are not due to being pregnant.⁣

Instead, we can blame most of those typical two-week wait symptoms on the hormone Progesterone. It rises after ovulation and drops right before you get your period.

Bloating, breast tenderness, headaches, fatigue, a change in appetite, nausea… all those lovely things can be attributed to Progesterone.⁣⁣⁣ Some women feel the most intense symptoms as progesterone peaks (usually about a week after ovulation), others notice it when there’s a drop, as a shift in hormones can also intensify these symptoms.⁣

And some don’t notice anything at all! And no, a lack of symptoms does not mean you’re out of the running either! You can be pregnant without any of the typical pregnancy symptoms, which is especially common in the early days of pregnancy.

The only way to know for sure is to take a pregnancy test, we just can’t rely on our bodies to tell us what’s going on!⁣