The trimesters of pregnancy are a tool that people use to help identify different sorts of stages that occur during pregnancy. Strictly speaking, a trimester is one third of pregnancy. Thus, there is the first, second, and the third trimester of pregnancy. The trimesters of pregnancy are defined by the specific pregnancy symptoms that a woman has, the growth and development of the baby, nutritional needs of both mother and baby, as well as the various physiological changes that occur.

The first trimester is most defined by the early development of your baby from an embryo into a fetus. The first trimester begins at conception, although we actually measure the weeks of pregnancy from the start of your last menstrual period. Often, a woman will spend a good portion of the first trimester not yet knowing that she is even pregnant. The first trimester lasts up until week 12 or week 13 of pregnancy. The first trimester is also when some of the symptoms of pregnancy, particularly morning sickness, tend to be at their worst. It is also during the first trimester that many women may experience feelings of fatigue.

The second trimester, which lasts from around week 13 to around week 27 of pregnancy, is very often the time that the expectant mother is going to feel the best. Morning sickness is generally a thing of the past at this point. The baby has not grown so big yet as to create too much physical difficulty for the woman. It is also during the second trimester that a woman will usually feel her baby begin to move.

The last part of pregnancy is the third trimester. This lasts from around week 27 of pregnancy until the baby is born. The third trimester is most defined by the growth that happens to the baby. This growth often leads to problems for the expectant mother, such as back ache and problems with bladder control. While pregnancy lasts, on an average, 40 weeks, you are considered to be full term at 37 weeks, and your baby may arrive at any point after that.

It is important to keep in mind that every pregnancy is different. It is also important to understand that the trimesters of pregnancy are a creation of our own, and that a woman’s body doesn’t necessarily divide things up nice and evenly. Still, using the ideas of trimesters is a sort of useful shorthand to talk about how pregnancy progresses.

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