5 Ways To Tell You Are Pregnant Without Peeing On A Stick

1. Metal Mouth – If you feel like you have been sucking on a handful of pennies, you are not alone! This is one of those symptoms that made me think I was crazy until I turned to trusty old Google and learned that it’s such a real thing it even has its own name, dysgeusia. As with just about everything pregnancy related, blame it on the hormones. There is no real treatment to make this annoying taste leave your mouth, but in the meantime you can try snacking on crackers, mints, hard candies, or just brush your teeth more often. Rest assured, it’s usually worst in the first trimester so the end is in sight….or you just get used to it, I’m not quite sure yet!
2. Gag Me – If the tip shared above about brushing your teeth more often is having you dry heaving over your bathroom sink, welcome to the club! Even if you are blessed enough to have avoided the dreaded morning sickness, you may find yourself gagging over the simplest things: brushing your teeth, coughing, kissing your husband (poor guy!), or eating foods with different textures.
3. Super Sonic Nose – Can you smell the cigarettes of the driver in front of you on your way to work? When it’s 0 degrees and both car’s windows are shut? Even when you allow the recommended safe distance between the cars for icy roads? Yep, you might be pregnant. This is a tough one. It seems like everywhere you go is filled with offensive odors. Even a slight spritz of your favorite perfume may leave you with a pounding heading thinking you bathed yourself in it like the blue-haired grannies that tend to think “more is more” when it comes to the scented spray. If you often find yourself in these smelly situations that you can’t immediately remove yourself from, try finding an essential oil that isn’t too overpowering and place a drop or two on your wrist. Better yet, purchase a diffuser necklace or bracelet so you can remove it if you find you made the wrong choice in oil scent for the day. Whenever you find yourself inhaling second-hand smoke or sharing a small space with someone who obviously skipped showering the past few days, discreetly move your hand or jewelry piece up towards your nose and take a whiff. Aaahhhhhh…….SO much better!
4. Fatigue – Can’t keep yourself awake to hear Chris Harrison’s famous last words, “Ladies, this is the final rose tonight” and you haven’t done anything all day besides countdown until bedtime? Your body might be using all your energy to grow something amazing! This fatigue is REAL. No man will ever understand the utter exhaustion a woman feels during the first trimester of pregnancy. And unfortunately no amount of napping or early bedtimes will help you bounce back to your pre-pregnancy energy levels. Not to say you shouldn’t take advantage of both though! I’ve found it works best for me to stick with a routine. This pregnancy I’m trying to take a short nap in the late afternoon, after work (if I work outside the home that day) and my middle schooler is home to keep an eye on the two little girls until the boys get home off the bus. Once the boys come barging in the door, that’s my alarm clock to get up, get supper going, and start my countdown to bedtime! I try to keep a consistent, fairly early bedtime whether it’s a weeknight or a hopping (haha!) weekend. Just remember that this too will pass…at least until the third trimester!
5. Peeing Like a Racehorse – Feeling like your bladder shrunk in half? Waking up at night, not because of other kids’ bad dreams or your husband’s annoying snoring, but rather because you feel like you are going to pee the bed RIGHT now?! No, it’s not because of the weight of baby pushing on your bladder at this point, but instead you get to blame our good friends the hormones again. Basically you can blame anything on hormones at this stage of the game: crying because you lost the keys, mad because your husband *forgot* to kiss you good-bye even though you are still gagging mid-kiss, or wearing mittens and slippers in the middle of summer because your fingers and toes are numb. ALLLLLLL hormones. The frequent need to pee may also be caused by an increase in fluid being processed by the kidneys because of the increase in blood being pumped, but that just sounds too scientific…let’s just stick with pointing our fingers at hormones, okay?!

This last symptom is the one that I self-diagnosed this pregnancy with WAY before any pregnancy test would pick up any hormone changes. But once I missed that “special” date that told me I was officially late, I still HAD to pee on a stick…not only because it’s kind of awesome watching those tiny purple lines magically appear, but because it was the only way to get my husband to believe me we were really going to do this again!

One more little PSA for my budget-minded friends out there…no need to pay an arm and a leg for a little strip of plastic to tell you that you are pregnant, Dollar Store and Walmart generic tests work just as good. Plus then you don’t have to feel guilty using way too many of them just to be *sure*.