97 Fun Facts About Pregnancy

Doctors count pregnancy weeks from which event?

The first day of the last period is the start point, so a woman is already counted as about two weeks pregnant by the time she conceives.

Why are pregnant women told to avoid soft cheeses like brie and camembert?

They may carry listeria bacteria; a pregnant woman may have only a mild, flu-like illness, yet the infection can cause miscarriage or stillbirth.

The switch from embryo to fetus at about ten weeks marks what milestone?

Its major organs have begun forming by then, though none is fully developed, so the fetal stage is mostly those organs growing and maturing.

Which nutrient is advised before and during early pregnancy to prevent neural tube defects?

Folic acid is advised before conception because neural tube defects arise in the first month of pregnancy, often before a woman knows she is pregnant.

Which sedative, sold in the late 1950s for morning sickness, caused thousands of birth defects?

Thalidomide was withdrawn after the birth-defect link emerged in 1961, yet decades later it was approved to treat the blood cancer multiple myeloma.

Which hormone do pregnancy tests detect in blood and urine?

hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) keeps the ovary's corpus luteum making progesterone, which sustains the uterine lining in early pregnancy.

What are the harmless 'practice' tightenings before real labour called?

Braxton Hicks contractions can be set off by dehydration or a full bladder, and unlike true labour a bout eases off rather than building stronger and closer together.

Louise Brown, born in England in 1978, was the first baby conceived through which technique?

IVF earned her the nickname 'test tube baby', though she was actually conceived in a Petri dish after her parents had tried for nine years.

What is the term for the first time a mother feels her baby move?

Quickening comes from an old sense of 'quicken', to come to life, since these movements are the first signs of life the mother can feel.

What is 'sympathetic pregnancy', in which a partner shares the symptoms, formally called?

Couvade syndrome is named after 'couvade', rituals in which a father takes to bed during the birth; studies show expectant fathers' hormone levels shift too.

Twins from a single fertilised egg that splits are described as what?

Identical (monozygotic) twins come from one fertilised egg that splits into two embryos, so they share virtually all their DNA.

When one twin dies early in pregnancy and is reabsorbed, what is it commonly called?

A vanishing twin is reabsorbed by the mother or the surviving twin, often with no symptoms, so such losses went unnoticed until early ultrasound scans.

Which surname belongs to 'Octomom', whose 2009 octuplets were the first set to all survive infancy?

Suleman's doctors were expecting seven babies, so the eighth took the delivery team by surprise.

The extremely rare event of conceiving a second baby while already pregnant is called what?

Superfetation leaves two babies at different stages of development in the womb at the same time; in humans it is so rare that only a handful of cases have been reported.

Which animal has the longest gestation of any mammal, at about 22 months?

The African elephant carries a calf for about 22 months, nearly two and a half human pregnancies, so a cow gives birth only once every few years.

What is the light spotting some women notice when an embryo attaches to the womb lining called?

Implantation bleeding tends to come around when a period is due, so it is easily mistaken for a light period before a pregnancy test.

When a very early birth is expected, why is the mother often given steroid injections?

To mature the baby's lungs: the steroids cross the placenta and cut the risk of breathing difficulties and death in babies born too early.

What is 'kangaroo care' for premature babies?

Skin-to-skin holding on a parent's chest began in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1978, when crowded neonatal units lacked enough incubators for small babies.

A pregnancy that reaches or passes 42 weeks is called what?

Post-term means 42 weeks or more; because the risk of stillbirth climbs, the NHS offers to induce labour once a pregnancy reaches 41 weeks.

What is the Latin-derived medical term for a pregnant woman?

A gravida is a pregnant woman; the word comes from Latin 'gravidus', meaning heavy or laden, the same root as 'gravity'.

Which pregnancy complication combines high blood pressure with protein in the urine?

Pre-eclampsia's early signs usually go unnoticed, so routine antenatal checks measure blood pressure and test urine; left untreated, it can cause seizures.

Which 0-to-10 score rates a newborn's condition at one and five minutes after birth?

The Apgar score is named after anaesthetist Virginia Apgar; the five-word mnemonic spelling out her surname was coined about ten years later as a learning aid.

What is a 'show' in late pregnancy?

The mucus plug in the cervix coming away is called a show; it means the cervix is starting to open, though labour may follow quickly or take a few days.

What is 'meconium'?

A newborn's first poo is sticky and tar-like, made from what the baby swallowed in the womb; a stressed baby may pass it before birth and breathe it in.

A popular myth says a fetal heartbeat reveals what?

Whether it's a boy or girl can't be told this way: a study of 477 early scans found no significant heart-rate difference, and a 2023 review agreed.

What is the first, antibody-rich 'milk' a mother produces just after birth called?

Colostrum is so concentrated that a newborn needs only about a teaspoonful per feed, and its mild laxative effect helps the baby pass its first stools.

What is the pregnancy-linked craving for non-food substances such as chalk or soil called?

Pica takes its name from the Latin for magpie, a bird said to eat almost anything; because it can signal low nutrients, doctors may test a sufferer's iron levels.

Which term describes a fetus lying bottom-first rather than head-first near the end of pregnancy?

Breech babies sit bottom-down in the womb; about 3 to 4% of babies are breech at term, and many are delivered by caesarean section.

In an ectopic pregnancy, where does the embryo most often implant?

A fallopian tube is where more than 90% of ectopic pregnancies implant; a tube can't hold a growing embryo, so the pregnancy can't be saved and usually has to be removed.

What is a pregnancy that the mother doesn't know about until late on, or even until labour, called?

A cryptic pregnancy can hide when periods are irregular or symptoms are mistaken for something else; about 1 in 2,500 pregnancies goes unnoticed right up to delivery.

What is behind about half of all miscarriages?

A chromosome error usually arises by chance when an egg or sperm carries the wrong number of chromosomes; such errors grow more common as the mother ages.

In which trimester is the risk of miscarriage highest?

The first trimester sees about 8 in 10 miscarriages, and they are rarely down to anything the mother did: everyday exercise and sex don't cause them.

Which of these countries had the highest fertility rate in 2024?

Niger's women averaged about six children each in 2024, against roughly four and a half in Nigeria and Afghanistan and two in India, so nearly half of Niger's people are under 15.

Roughly how many pregnancies begin worldwide each year?

Around 200 million is the scale: researchers estimated 213 million pregnancies in 2012, far more than the babies born, because many pregnancies end in miscarriage or abortion.

Cerebral palsy is far more common among which group of newborns?

Cerebral palsy is several times more common in multiple births like twins and triplets, largely because they are far more often born prematurely and at low birth weight.

What name is given to the facial pigmentation sometimes called the 'mask of pregnancy'?

Melasma, also called chloasma or the 'mask of pregnancy', is a patchy brown pigmentation of the face triggered by pregnancy hormones and sunlight; it usually fades after delivery.

What made Iowa's McCaughey family famous in 1997?

The first septuplets known to survive infancy drew a flood of donations: a large house, a van, nanny services and the offer of free places at Iowa's state universities.

Which hormone drives the contractions of labour and is given synthetically to induce it?

Oxytocin works in a rare positive feedback loop: the baby pressing on the cervix triggers its release, contractions push the baby down harder, and more is released until the birth.

Which vaccine-preventable infection in early pregnancy classically causes deafness and heart defects in the baby?

Rubella, or German measles, was linked to birth defects in 1941 by Australian eye doctor Norman Gregg, who traced a wave of babies born with cataracts to mothers infected during an epidemic.

In pregnancy care, Naegele's rule is used to estimate what?

The baby's due date, by Naegele's rule, falls 40 weeks into the pregnancy, yet only about 1 in 25 babies actually arrives on the day itself.

Half-foreign to its mother, a fetus poses the same immune puzzle as which procedure?

An organ transplant from a half-matched donor would normally be rejected, yet the mother's body tolerates the fetus; Peter Medawar posed the puzzle in 1953 and later won a Nobel Prize for work on immune tolerance.

Which part of the body can pregnancy make permanently bigger?

The feet can lengthen for good: a University of Iowa study found that arches flattened during pregnancy, probably under extra weight and looser ligaments, and had not recovered months after the birth.

Which gas in cigarette smoke cuts the oxygen reaching an unborn baby?

Carbon monoxide latches onto the haemoglobin in red blood cells in place of oxygen, so less reaches the baby; that shortfall is one reason smokers' babies tend to be born smaller.

Pregnant women are told to avoid scuba diving because the baby has no protection against what?

Decompression sickness is a risk the baby has no protection against, so scuba diving is ruled out, whereas swimming is encouraged, since the water supports the extra weight.

Which term, from a word meaning 'to erase', describes the cervix thinning out before birth?

Effacement, scored in percent, is one of the cervical checks doctors use to judge whether inducing labour is likely to succeed.

Which WHO and UNICEF programme, launched in 1991, accredits maternity units that support breastfeeding?

Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative status rests on ten steps, and step one is obeying the international code that curbs the marketing of formula milk, so accredited wards can't promote formula to new mothers.

A 2022 UN report found nearly half of the world's pregnancies were what?

Unintended pregnancies make up nearly half the total, the UN Population Fund reported, calling it a neglected crisis; roughly six in ten of them end in abortion.

Which animal 'died' in a common 20th-century euphemism for a positive pregnancy test result?

Rabbit ovaries showed the result only on dissection, so the animal died whether or not the woman was pregnant.

Ancient Egyptian women tested for pregnancy by watering bags of which two grains with their urine?

Wheat and barley that sprouted meant a baby was on the way, and the type of grain that came up was taken as a sign of the child's sex.

In which fish does the male carry the eggs in a brood pouch and give birth to the young?

Seahorse fathers do more than hold the eggs: the pouch supplies oxygen and extra nutrients, which is why biologists call it male pregnancy.

Which 1950s sitcom wrote its star's pregnancy into the plot but could not say the word 'pregnant'?

I Love Lucy had to say 'expecting' instead, and the episode that broke the news used the French word enceinte in its title.

Which bones are only soft cartilage in a newborn and do not begin to harden until about age three?

Kneecaps first appear as a point of cartilage in the third month in the womb, and they do not finish turning to bone until around puberty.

Which actress posed nude and seven months pregnant for Annie Leibovitz's 1991 Vanity Fair cover?

Demi Moore's cover went on sale wrapped in a white envelope that showed only her eyes, and many celebrities have since posed the same way.

Which profession takes its name from Middle English words that literally mean 'with woman'?

Midwife describes the helper rather than the mother: she is the woman who is 'with' another woman while she gives birth.

Which anaesthetic did Queen Victoria inhale during the 1853 birth of her eighth child, Leopold?

Chloroform was given to her by John Snow, the same doctor who traced a London cholera outbreak to a public water pump, and she had it again for her next birth.

What did blogger Jenna Karvunidis use to announce her baby's sex in 2008, an early example of a gender reveal?

A cake was all it took, but Karvunidis later begged people to stop the parties after a reveal stunt's smoke device started a huge California wildfire in 2020.

Margaret Crane built her 1967 prototype home pregnancy test inside a plastic holder made for what?

Paper clips came out and a test tube, a dropper and a mirror went in, so a woman could read the result at home instead of waiting on a laboratory.

What name is given to the soft spots on a newborn's head where the skull bones have not yet joined?

Fontanelles let the skull's bony plates flex so the head can pass through the birth canal, and the one at the front can stay open until about 18 months.

Pregnant women are advised not to clean cat litter trays because of which parasitic infection?

Toxoplasmosis spreads this way because the parasite is only known to reproduce sexually in the cat family, whose droppings then carry it.

What Latin name is given to the dark vertical line that often appears on the abdomen in pregnancy?

Linea nigra simply means 'black line'; it runs from the navel to the pubic bone and usually fades away within a few months of the birth.

Which mosquito-borne disease caused a 2015–16 epidemic in Brazil linked to babies born with small heads?

Zika fever struck an estimated 1.5 million people in Brazil, and US health officials advised pregnant women to postpone travel to the countries affected.

Which sleeping position for babies does most to cut the risk of sudden infant death syndrome?

On the back is the advice behind the Safe to Sleep campaigns, and rates of sudden infant death have fallen by up to 80% in areas that ran them.

Which nutrient is routinely injected into newborns soon after birth to prevent a rare bleeding disorder?

Vitamin K passes the placenta poorly and breast milk holds little of it, so babies start life with low stores of the vitamin their bodies need for clotting.

Which doctor cut deaths from childbed fever in 1840s Vienna by making his staff wash their hands?

Ignaz Semmelweis was mocked by fellow doctors for the idea and died in an asylum in 1865, years before germ theory explained why it worked.

Which paediatrician's 1946 guide Baby and Child Care told parents they knew more than they thought?

Benjamin Spock's guide sold 500,000 copies in its first six months and 50 million by his death in 1998, overturning earlier experts' advice to raise babies on a strict schedule.

Which 2007 film follows a Minnesota teenager choosing adoptive parents for her unplanned baby?

Juno won Diablo Cody the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, a script she wrote over seven weeks in the Starbucks corner of a Target store.

Which singer's pregnancy reveal at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards set a record for tweets per second?

Beyoncé's reveal drew 8,868 tweets per second and helped make that year's ceremony the most-watched broadcast MTV had ever aired, with 12.4 million viewers.

Which yellow-orange pigment builds up in a newborn's blood to cause neonatal jaundice?

Bilirubin can be cleared with light: the treatment grew from a nurse's observation at an English hospital that babies exposed to sunlight had less jaundice.

Which newborn reflex, set off by a sudden loss of support, makes a baby fling both arms out wide?

Moro is the paediatrician it is named after, Ernst Moro, who set it off by slapping a pillow on both sides of a baby's head; it disappears at about six months.

Robert Guthrie's heel-prick blood test for newborns was first developed to detect which disorder?

Phenylketonuria was the first target because a special diet begun soon after birth lets an affected baby grow up with normal brain development.

Which monkey gave its name to the blood factor that can set a pregnant woman's immune system against her baby?

Rhesus macaque blood was used to make the serum that revealed the factor, though the human version later proved to be a different molecule, so the name is a misnomer.

In which Scottish city did Ian Donald pioneer ultrasound scans of unborn babies in the 1950s?

Glasgow's heavy industry supplied the idea: Donald borrowed a flaw detector built to find cracks in metal welds and turned it on his patients.

Which prenatal test draws fluid from around the baby through a thin needle in the mother's abdomen?

Amniocentesis works because the fluid contains cells shed by the baby, which a laboratory can then check for genetic conditions.

Which severe pregnancy sickness sent Catherine, Princess of Wales, to hospital in her first pregnancy?

Hyperemesis gravidarum returned in both of her later pregnancies, and the novelist Charlotte Brontë is often thought to have suffered from it too.

The 'obstetrical dilemma' blames hard human births on big-brained babies and which other evolved trait?

Walking upright narrowed the bony birth canal, so on this account human babies must rotate on the way out and arrive less developed than other primates' young.

Studies of new fathers show that levels of which hormone tend to fall once a man is caring for a baby?

Testosterone runs lowest in the men who do the most hands-on childcare, and a father whose level dips when his baby cries is thought to be empathising with it.

Which Nordic country led the way on paternity leave by making parental leave gender neutral in 1974?

Sweden's change was soon copied by its Nordic neighbours, which became some of the earliest countries to push fathers to take time off with a new baby.

Which amphibian, injected with a woman's urine, served as a living pregnancy test until the 1960s?

Clawed frog females produced eggs within 8 to 12 hours of the injection if the woman was pregnant, and the animals were exported in great numbers to laboratories.

Which substance, a focus of stem-cell research, protects the blood vessels in the umbilical cord?

Wharton's jelly also works as a natural clamp: it collapses as the temperature changes after delivery, closing off the cord's vessels within about three minutes.

Which waxy white coating covers a baby's skin in the womb and is often visible just after the birth?

Vernix is short for vernix caseosa, Latin for 'cheesy varnish', and it is thought to protect the skin before the birth and for a few hours afterwards.

Unconscious pregnant women are turned onto their left side to take pressure off which large vein?

The inferior vena cava runs up the right side of the body, so turning a pregnant woman to her left frees it and lets blood flow back to the heart.

Which birthing instrument did the Chamberlen family of surgeons keep secret for 150 years?

Forceps let the Chamberlens deliver live babies in difficult births, which won them royal clients, and their original tools turned up hidden in an attic in 1813.

Which Egyptian goddess of childbirth was depicted as a female hippopotamus standing on two legs?

Taweret took that form because Egyptians revered female hippos for fiercely guarding their young, so her likeness was worn as a protective amulet.

In Luke's Gospel, which relative does the pregnant Mary visit, whose own unborn child stirs at her greeting?

Elizabeth was herself about six months pregnant with John the Baptist, and the meeting of the two mothers is celebrated in churches as the Visitation.

In Greek myth, which god did Zeus sew into his thigh to finish growing after the pregnant Semele died?

Dionysus was known as 'the insewn' and 'twice-born' as a result, and in the usual telling it was a jealous Hera who tricked Semele into her fatal request.

Which 1434 Jan van Eyck painting shows a wife who looks pregnant but is probably just holding up her skirts?

The Arnolfini Portrait shows fashion rather than a baby on the way: art historians point to many paintings of virgin saints dressed in the same full-fronted style.

Which 1968 horror film follows a pregnant New Yorker who fears her neighbours have plans for her child?

Rosemary's Baby won Ruth Gordon an Oscar as one of the elderly neighbours, and director Roman Polanski wrote its 272-page script in about three weeks.

Which actor plays Arnold Schwarzenegger's research partner in Junior, the 1994 comedy about a pregnant man?

Danny DeVito had already teamed up with Schwarzenegger and director Ivan Reitman on a 1988 hit comedy, and here plays the doctor who talks him into the experiment.

Which British actor plays the reluctant father-to-be in the 1995 Chris Columbus comedy Nine Months?

Hugh Grant made it his first starring role in an American film; the story of a man panicked by impending fatherhood is a remake of the French comedy Neuf mois.

Which sitcom character's choice to raise a baby alone was attacked by Vice President Dan Quayle in 1992?

Murphy Brown hit back in the next season's opener, which wove real footage of the speech into the plot, and star Candice Bergen thanked Quayle when she won an Emmy.

Which author's story The Storks popularised the ancient legend that the birds deliver newborn babies?

Hans Christian Andersen published the tale in 1839; in German folklore the birds found babies in caves or marshes and carried them home in a basket.

Which flower names the practice of leaving a baby's umbilical cord uncut until it drops off naturally?

Lotus birth keeps the baby attached to the placenta for the 3 to 10 days the cord takes to dry and detach, which leaves mother and child largely housebound.

What name, from the Greek for 'yoked', is given to the cell formed when a sperm fuses with an egg?

Zygote is the name for the very first cell of a new human, and about 30 hours after fertilisation it divides for the first time into two.

Which wife of Henry VIII died within two weeks of giving birth to the future Edward VI?

Jane Seymour was the only one of his wives to be given a queen's funeral, and Henry was later buried beside her at Windsor Castle.

Whose search for reassurance in her first pregnancy led to the guide What to Expect When You're Expecting?

Heidi Murkoff wrote the first editions with her mother and her sister, a nurse, and the result has been described as the bible of American pregnancy.

Which British cabinet minister attended royal births until 1936 to confirm the baby was a genuine heir?

The Home Secretary was there to rule out an impostor being passed off as an heir, a duty George VI abolished shortly before the birth of the future Charles III.

Which woman in Genesis laughs when she overhears that she will bear a son in her old age?

Sarah was ninety at the time, and the son she went on to bear was named Isaac, from the Hebrew word for laughter.