PREPARING FOR PREGNANCY

 PREPARING FOR PREGNANCY 

Every single day of pregnancy is important for the baby. Yet in every pregnancy there is a period of weeks when the mother does not know she has conceived. At any time in this country more than three million women are pregnant but almost one million of them are not yet aware of it. At the time a woman notices her first skipped period, her baby is likely to have been developing for about two weeks. Early development is rapid. 

Even within a month after conception, the baby's heart, kidneys, brain, liver, digestive tract, arms, legs, eyes, and ears have begun to form. Before the fourth week, the heart is already beating. And yet in the early weeks, when so much is going on within her to form her baby, the mother-to-be is unaware. Sperm cells face hazards, beginning in the vagina whose acid secretions kill millions. But many escape, swimming up through the vagina by means of their whip like tails. Those with sufficient energy proceed through the cervical canal into the uterus, and on into the fallopian tubes.

There is only a short period, about two days, when the egg cell is in the right place and in the right condition to be fertilized. 

Average sperm can retain their potency for only about 48 hours within the woman's reproductive tract except in rare instances. But if all goes well, if the act of intercourse occurs at or near the time of ovulation and the sperm are normally active, the chances are that a male cell will reach the egg, penetrate it, and in that moment a new life is created. The moment fertilization occurs-with the union of one sperm cell and one egg cell-all the characteristics the child is to inherit are deter- mined. The question of whether the baby will be blond or brunet, blue- eyed or brown-eyed is settled. So is sex. Whether a baby is to be boy or girl depends entirely upon the sperm cell. Will you have twins or triplets? This, too, is determined at the time of fertilization. 

Multiple births tend to occur more frequently in some families than in others. On the average, the chance of having twins is one in 88; for triplets, it is one in 6,000; and for quadruplets, one in 500,000. Very quickly after fertilization, the egg begins to divide. Five to seven days later, the embryo, still tiny but made up now of many cells formed by division, travels to the wall of the uterus where it attaches itself. At this stage, it grows rapidly. By about the twenty-eighth day after conception, the embryo is large enough to be seen without a microscope.