¶ … pregnancy alongside with discussion on an interview taken of a mother who shares her experiences of during and after pregnancy moments. Pregnancy- an interview

Pregnancy is that stage of reproduction when the sperm has fertilized itself with the female reproductive egg known as fetus or embryo inside the female womb. A pregnancy can also be of multiple gestations, as in case of twins, triplets and quadruplets, except of humans all other mammalian pregnancies mostly conceive more than one off springs but human pregnancy is the most studied of all mammalian pregnancies. The occasion of childbirth usually occurs after 38-40 after conception, while it can take from 7 to 15 days to conceive. This makes approximately 40 weeks from a woman's last menstrual cycle of four weeks. The World Health Organization defines normal term for delivery as between 37 weeks and 42 weeks Typol, (2006).

Terminology

There are various terminologies for being in the state of pregnancy, one of the most commonly known terms is gravid and a pregnant female is called a gravid. Similarly another term parity (abbreviated as para) is referred for someone who has had successful previous pregnancies. The medical term for someone who has never conceived before is nullgravida, also a woman who has been pregnant before only once is called a primigravida and a woman with subsequent pregnancies is referred as multi-gravida or multiparous. Therefore, a woman during her pregnancy would be described as gravida2, para1 and upon delivery she will be called as gravida2, para2. An in-progress pregnancy, as well as abortions, miscarriages and still births make the parity value less than the gravid number, whereas a multiple birth will increase the parity value. Women who have never carried a pregnancy achieving more than 20 weeks of gestation age are referred to as "nulliparous." Although these are commonly known cultural and Medical terms, these are hardly used in everyday lingo. Heyman, & Henriksen, (2001).

The commonly used terms during a pregnancy are embryo and fetus; these terms are used according to the development stage in the pregnancy. The term embryo is used till the first 8 weeks following conception, and the term fetus is used from the 2nd month until birth.

Throughout the world, medical and legal terms used for pregnancy are somewhat arbitrarily divided into the three trimester periods, as a way to simplify reference to the different stages of fetus development. Beginning with the first trimester, this period carries the highest risk of miscarriage (natural death of embryo). In the second trimester the development of the fetus can easily diagnosed and monitored, there are also less chances of a miscarriage since the pregnancy somewhat stabilizes, Kane, (2005). In the third trimester the doctor can easily validate the chances of the fetus to survive without any medical help outside the uterus.

However with the advent of modern science and the internet everyone is familiar with the various terminologies associated with pregnancy along side with the numerous natural and artificial methods for conceiving. The purpose for this paper is to go through the different stages of pregnancy, but from the exterior point-of-view not the interior. Rather than discussing what the offspring growing inside goes throw, in this paper for a change we will discuss what the mother carrying the fetus goes through along with her various stages of pregnancy. We will shed light on personal psychological reaction to the development inside her as well as her relationship with her mate and people in general around.

For this sole purpose, we invited a woman to interview her first hand about her experience during and after the pregnancy and in what way did it affect her relationship with her spouse. For privacy's sake we will not disclose her name however we will discuss at length the entire process. The female we interviewed is 33 years old, married with 3 children; 2 daughters and a baby son....

Prior to getting pregnant she had a successful career and had to switch to being a full time mother because of her children. She happens to be a very close family friend, so privacy and awkward moments were not an issue.
The first question asked was that how did her pregnancy affect her? According to her,

She is a very practical woman and knew something was wrong because she would not stop throwing up almost every morning and the lightest of smells irritated her. So she decided to get a pregnancy test, after seeking information and counseling she went through the test and it came positive. After being offered an ultra sound which she accepted she knew she was just going to "see a blob of tissue." Once the clear, water-based gels was applied to her stomach area, the ultra sound screen jumped to life, according to our interviewee "the screen of the ultrasound jumped alive with my baby's face very close and hands visibly waving as if to say, "Hi Mom, I'm not a blob." She did not say anything throughout the length of her ultra sound, but her tears spoke volumes.

Since her first visit to her doctor our mother was so excited that for the next few appointments, she would show up at the doctors a day or a few earlier because she could not just wait to see the ultra sound, "my happiness had reached insane levels, I even contemplated with my husband to get a small ultrasound machine, of course he told me to be quiet." She would show up early before her appointments and would insist on getting the ultrasound done at that time instead of waiting for a day or two, "I just wanted to see. I just wanted to see the ultrasound."

Being a working woman she had realized that there will come a point where she will have to choose between her career and her baby. I worked as a PR manager for an advertisement agency, which means that one has to be on the spot mostly standing for 10 hours sometimes. However she did try to bridge between her work and the pregnancy, but it was becoming difficult day by day and she was getting tired more easily and had to rest a lot, "Going to the various events I had to do PR for was physically demanding; I had to be on my feet for 10 hours a day and had to make sure everything from the PA system to the media meet and greet was set up. I just couldn't do it anymore." So as her pregnancy progressed, she started to become more interested in all things baby and maternity, so it seemed natural to branch into doing PR for these companies. PR agencies depend on your contacts, so she had to attend baby events to network and make friends. Being pregnant and having my baby gave me all the extra know-how I needed to break into this new area of business.

The second question we asked was how the pregnancy affected her relationship with her husband. She said that when a couple has a baby their relationship changes from "couple" to "parents." Every decision they make now has to consider the baby, and every decision one makes will, inevitably, have your baby's best interest at heart. For some relationships this can be extremely empowering because the husband might feel he is no longer the center of attention and wife would feel that she has no one to talk to. Same was the case with our mother, in the first month of her pregnancy she says that her she and her husband became a bit distant because they both had things on their minds and did not know if they should voice their concerns.

But they quickly realized that the key to their relationship sweet was effective communication, especially during pregnancy because the woman needs special care emotionally and mentally alongside to her physical needs "that's how we made the transition from couple to family, gliding through the tricky times and emerging stronger and closer"

How did her life change during pregnancy? "it was a new life for me!" her old routine alongside to her job were gone, and she was starting to get used to having more free time to herself and utilized that to take care of her and the baby and engrossed herself in her business. However morning sickness was pretty hard on her, she suffered pretty badly because of morning sickness during her second pregnancy and it was triggered by different things like the smell of food cooking or dirty nappies. Her memories of the first half of the pregnancy are of being sick, morning, noon and night, even an apple made her "Nine weeks into my pregnancy the sickness took a more serious turn. The day started as usual - I got up, vomited, had a cup of tea, vomited again, had yoghurt, more vomiting, some toast, vomiting, and so on. I began to get worried when it hadn't stopped by midday as it usually did - it just went on and on."

Her sense of smell also…