Pregnancy calendar

The 1st trimester: Week 2

Wanting to fall pregnant? It helps if you know exactly when you're ovulating before trying, in order to increase the odds. A good indication of this is whether you have a regular menstrual cycle. Have a look at our Fertility Calculator to determine when your best conception dates are. It usually takes a couple (under age 35) on average 6 cycles before they fall pregnant.

Your baby

How your baby's growing

You're now in the middle of the 28-day menstrual cycle and hopefully ovulating, the point at which you're most likely to conceive. Having sex this week without protection could lead to pregnancy – conception occurs when your partner's sperm meets the egg that's travelled into your Fallopian tube.

As the fertilised egg moves down your Fallopian tube towards your uterus, it goes into overdrive, dividing into two cells just 30 hours after conception, then four, then eight and so on. By one week after fertilisation, the egg has grown to 250 cells.

Your body

What you may be feeling

You may be anxious as to whether it will 'work' first time or not.

You may have tried for years not to fall pregnant, and now that you want to it might not be all that easy, especially if you're close to 40...

For the guys

If you're planning a family and you're a smoker, be prepared to cut down and make changes from the get-go.

Tip of the week

Quit smoking!

If you're still smoking, now is definitely the time to quit. In case you still need encouragement, consider the following: Craniofacial Journal reports a study that found that pregnant women who smoke increase the chance of their babies being born with a cleft lip.

Pediatric Journal reports that smoking mothers are more likely to have colicky newborns. Furthermore, scientists have showed that women who binge drink, get depressed or smoke during pregnancy boost their risk for depression and addiction after giving birth.

Your partner smoking also ups the risk-factor: according to the American Journal of Epidemiology, nearly a third of women whose partners smoked more than 20 a day lost their babies within six weeks, compared with only a fifth of women whose partners didn't smoke. Smoking also ups the chances of cot death - and that includes dad smoking too! Don't let anyone smoke in the house, before or after the birth.