Your baby
This is the first week after your period. Not much happens yet. If your cycle is regular, you will ovulate next week, so you are not pregnant at all right now. And yet this week counts as the first week of your pregnancy.
Here is why. To work out as accurately as possible when your baby will be born, the calculation does not start from the moment of conception — you never know exactly when that was — but from the first day of your last period. Growing from a fertilised egg into a full-term baby takes 38 weeks.
By taking the first day of your last period and adding 40 weeks, you can work out roughly when your baby will arrive. It is only an estimate, of course: your baby may just as easily come two weeks before the due date, or two weeks after.
You
From the moment you want to become pregnant, it is sensible to start following a few rules of health. After all, you never know when conception will happen, and the sooner you start living healthily the better. In this case healthily means leaving alcohol and cigarettes well alone.
Is your family doctor about to prescribe medication? Always tell them you are hoping to become pregnant, because medicines too can harm an unborn child.
Taking folic acid
It is sensible to take folic acid (0.4 or 0.5 milligrams a day) from the moment you stop taking the pill. Folic acid reduces the chance of your baby being born with a serious condition of the central nervous system, such as spina bifida or a cleft lip.
Research also shows that taking folic acid can help prevent a miscarriage. You can carry on taking it until you are eight weeks pregnant; after that it is no longer needed.
No alcohol
There is no safe lower limit below which alcohol does no harm. The advice is therefore simple: do not drink alcohol at all. And because you do not know exactly when you become pregnant, that glass of wine is better left standing.
First trimester
