4 Weeks Pregnant

If you haven’t started taking a prenatal vitamin yet, now’s the time. (And no, a standard multi won’t do.) Prenatals contain vitamins and minerals that are essential for your growing baby.

For example, folic acid (aka folate) — which is found naturally in whole grains, green leafy vegetables, beans, bananas, broccoli and milk, and added via fortification to breads and cereals — is not only critical for neural tube development early in pregnancy but also for the development of your baby's brain during all nine months.

The best prenatal for you is the one that you can actually tolerate — which, for some people, may be a chewable or liquid option, or a softgel coated in gelatin.

Whichever prenatal you choose, make sure it hits, or comes close to, the recommended intake of folic acid, iron (if you can tolerate it), calcium, vitamin D, choline, omega-3 fatty acids, B vitamins and vitamin C.

Think you need a Ph.D. in quantum physics to figure out your due date? Doing the math is actually a lot easier than you think — even if you slept through high school algebra. Your estimated due date is 40 weeks from the first day of your last period.

Here's the slightly confusing part: If you do give birth on that day, your baby will have clocked in only 38 weeks in utero, not 40. That's because the pregnancy countdown begins two weeks before your baby is even conceived — making you about four weeks pregnant before you see a positive pregnancy test.

Regardless, you shouldn't plan your schedule around your estimated due date. After all, it is just an estimate. Most babies are born between 38 and 42 weeks, and babies of first-time moms are more likely to arrive on the later side. Only a handful of babies actually make their debuts right on schedule.

If your pregnant test is showing a barely visible, faint line — one that looks more like a smudge of chalk — it usually means that implantation has occurred.

Still, you’ll want to take the test again in a few days or so to make sure the line has become thicker and darker, which means your pregnancy is progressing.

If you see a faint line on your pregnancy test but get your period later on, that means you were only briefly pregnant. In this case, you may have experienced a very early (and common) pregnancy loss called a chemical pregnancy. As upsetting as this may be, it won’t impact your ability to get pregnant in the future.

Priority number one is having a healthy baby. But it’s not uncommon to have your heart set on having a boy or girl, especially if you’ve already had a baby of the opposite sex. 

Unless you’re getting an assist from science — in the form of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (which is used along with IVF) or sperm sorting — there’s no real way to choose the sex of your baby. 

That said, some couples swear by the Shettles Method, which theorizes that having sex as close to ovulation as possible can net you a baby boy (Y-sperm are supposedly speedier); having sex two to three days before ovulation can yield a baby girl (X-sperm are supposedly slower but more resilient).

In general, healthy couples have a 20 to 25 percent chance of getting pregnant during each month’s cycle. The catch: That assumes you’re having sex “regularly” — two to three times a week — and without contraception. About 85 percent of couples who are trying to conceive will get pregnant within a year.

Once sperm meets egg, you can expect the process to go fairly quickly — it’ll take about two to three weeks for the fertilized egg to travel to the uterus and implant on the uterine wall, resulting in a pregnancy.

Once the fertilized egg travels down the fallopian tubes, it will implant into the wall of the uterus — a process aptly known as implantation. Many women don’t experience any symptoms of implantation, but some will feel abdominal cramps and light bleeding.

Whether you feel anything or not, implantation marks the beginning of your pregnancy. It won’t be long now!

Drugstore pregnancy tests aren’t always cheap, but they are up to 99 percent accurate. Homemade pregnancy tests, on the other hand — while popular with bloggers and on YouTube — aren’t reliable at all (though they can be entertaining to try!).

The thinking goes that by combining your urine with salt, sugar, toothpaste, or even bleach, you can detect the presence of the pregnancy hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG).

But there’s no evidence that these tests can yield an accurate result, and no major medical organization recommends using them. Still, if you want to try one for fun, have at it (as long as you go in knowing they're just for laughs).