As grown women, we would like to think that we’ve gained a little bit of knowledge about baby-making since our teenage years. After all, we no longer think you can’t get pregnant your first time or that pulling out is an error-proof method of contraception. There seems to be a lot of information out there about sex, pregnancy and babies. When you search the internet you will be bombarded with websites, online forums, and tons of apps on the subject. This knowledge (and of course your doctor or midwife appointments) are devoted to getting you knocked up and helping you through a healthy 9 months.

But when it comes to the before, during and after of having a baby, there is still a lot you may not know. Although pregnancy seems like it comes with a lot of information, a lot of women discover some pretty interesting facts on their own. There are certain things about conceiving, being pregnancy and postpartum that no talks about! Whether it’s embarrassing, unpleasant or just plain weird, many experiences are going unshared, making them realities that women have never heard of before. With this in mind, we will dive into 15 truths about getting pregnant (and being pregnant) that no one tells you!

15 Doing It Isn’t The Same When Pregnant

When it comes to doing the deed to try to conceive, a lot of women spend countless hours under the sheets trying to get that big fat positive. Sex when trying to conceive can be a roller coaster of sexy sessions and awkward quickies. But the untold truth is that when that positive pregnancy test is finally achieved,  sex may be less than desirable for some women.

Some women report their partners being afraid of hurting the baby which makes them resistant to “alone time” (don’t worry, that baby is too far up there). But for women, as pregnancy progresses, sex can be a chore rather than something to look forward to. This is especially truth in the third trimester when your body is bigger and you can’t get into the same positions you are used to. As one woman comments “You can try different positions but I found that a lot of them didn’t work for me, so it was basically for my husband that we would be doing the deed.”

14 People Can Be Insensitive About Infertility

When it comes to getting pregnant, there can be a lot of ups and downs. Some women can get pregnant as soon as they start trying, whereas others take much longer. They say for couples in their 30s, it could take up to a year to conceive their first baby, and this is considered normal. That’s a long time with plenty of negative tests and crushed spirits.

And of course, we all have that one relative who loves to ask “when are you guys going to have kids?” What people don’t realize is that these types of questions can be hurtful to a couple who actually has been trying. As one women mentions: “I found that people sometimes assumed we weren’t ready or didn’t want kid instead of thinking that we had actually been trying for a while but weren’t successful. I’ve noticed there’s a lack of sensitivity about that.” If a couple is newly married or together (or even been together for a while), do them a favor and keep your questions to yourself. Unless they bring it up, they probably don’t want to talk about it. And if you are that so called relative who bombards couples with baby questions: it won’t make it happen any faster, so you might as well back off.

13 Conceiving May Not Be As Easy As You Think

Yes, some women are fertile myrtle and get pregnant in a snap. But for the major of couples hoping to conceive a little one, that’s not always the case. When my husband and I started trying, I thought it would go something like: go off birth control and then bam – a baby! But my eyes were opened to the truth that conceiving can take time for a lot of people.

It turns out 1 in every 10 couples struggle with infertility. That’s millions of people in North America alone. These people normally struggle in silence, too afraid or ashamed to get help. There is a stigma around infertility that goes back hundreds of years (I mean look at Henry VIII who beheaded all those wives because they couldn’t conceive a child) and it still exists today. There is hope: with medical advances and technologies, it is beneficial to see your health care professional if you’re struggling to conceive.

12 You Can Test Negative And Still Be Pregnant

Who would have thought testing for pregnancy would be so complicated? I mean it seems simple, right? Wait for a missed period and test. If it’s positive then celebrate. If it’s negative then try again. But the truth is it’s just not that easy. There are many women who get countless false negatives for a whole bunch of reasons. Granted, some women test too early. But even for women who wait for a missed period, you can still get a negative test because it’s possible the woman ovulated later, had diluted urine or just didn’t have enough of the hormone in their system to show up on a test.

Here are the facts: once you conceive, the embryo needs to implant in the uterus. That can take 7-15 days. After implantation, it can take up to 2 days for your body to start producing the pregnancy hormone. Now you’re looking at potentially 17 days on the longer end – and even at 17 days, it could still take a few more days to have enough of the hormone to show up positive on a test. So for some women, it could take over two weeks after their missed period to show a positive on a home pregnancy test, depending on the brand and sensitive of the test. That’s definitely something to keep in mind if you’re trying to conceive.

11 Food Cravings Are Constantly Changing

There is no doubt we have all heard of the abundance of food cravings that pregnant women get. There are stories of women craving bizarre things from liver to pork grins to romaine lettuce. My own mother craved McDonalds and ate it twice a day with me (yes incredibly unhealthy) but with my younger brother, she craved green beans (what a difference).

But what women may not know is that these cravings don’t necessarily stay the same. As one woman reports: “I never know if what I’m craving today I’ll be craving tomorrow as well. So, I’ve learned not to stock up on anything because I may not like it the next day”. Yes, the truth that no one tells you is that cravings change on a daily (and maybe even hourly) basis and it’s something to be aware of if you don’t want to waste a lot of money buying in bulk.

10 You Need To Do The Deed Before Ovulation To Conceive

According to one studying, only 10 percent of women knew that sex should happen before ovulation in order to get pregnant. Many women believe that the best time to do the deed is when you’re ovulating but this isn’t the case. His little swimmers need to be inside you and at the ready, waiting for the egg before it is released to increase your chances of pregnancy. This is because his swimmers can live for up to 5 days inside you, while your egg can only survive for 12-24 hours.

If you’re using an at-home ovulation test, it will tell you when you get the surge of hormones right before ovulation, which means ovulation may be 24-48 hours away. That means you should start having sex pronto. If you wait until ovulation begins, you’re essentially missing your window. Because you may not know exactly when you ovulate, doing the deed every other day during the week you are ovulating (or your fertile window) and a few days after will increase your chances of success.

9 Just Because It Took You A While To Conceive Baby #1 Doesn’t Mean That It Will With Baby #2

Just because you tried for years to conceive Baby #1 doesn't mean Baby #2 will take the same kind of effort, though many people think so. "This is totally untrue," says one doctor as she shares one of her own patients' stories as an example: "One of my patients had to have in-vitro to conceive her first pregnancy, with no fertility treatment at all, she delivered her third child. She was delighted, but they certainly had not been trying to conceive - she was convinced she would never get pregnant without in vitro!"

Then there's the story of a  friend who took two and a half years to conceive her daughter. When her daughter was 3 months old, she found out she was pregnant with baby number two! Just like that: Irish twins (two babies born within a year of each other). Our bodies are strange and wonderful! They are capable of a lot more than we comprehend. So if it took a while to conceive baby # 1 , keep in mind that may not be the case for baby #2.

8 The Second Trimester Is Awkward

All of a sudden, week 13 creeps up and you are safely in your second trimester. A few weeks later, your belly begins to grow – but how obvious is it to other people that you are pregnant? A lot of women confess that although they love the second trimester for the improvement of morning sickness symptoms and the increase in energy, they feel it is a pretty awkward phrase.

People outside of your close circle of friends may not notice you are pregnant yet and just assume you have gained weight. You may not get offered a seat on the bus (even though you’re incredibly tired) and you just feel like you are in pregnancy limbo. By this point, a pregnant woman would know she was pregnant and sense the physical changes. But when others don’t notice or it’s questionable, it may get awkward. People may dance around the subject waiting for you to say something, creating awkward silences. On the flip side, some might actually be brave enough to offer a word of congratulations, leaving you wondering if they really knew or were taking a chance.

Although it may be an awkward time, you can take solace in that it is only temporary. Time flies, and soon enough you will be so huge there will be no questions asked.

7 Baby Bump Gets In The Way

In your early stages of pregnancy, you may long for the days when you have a decent size baby bump. You want to feel the baby kicking away inside and you have that goddess-like glow about you that everyone notices. But what many women fail to realize is that that baby belly gets in the way – so much so that it can affect your normal daily routine.

Pregnant women grow at different rates, and how round you get can be determined by weight, height and so on. Some women, especially lose who are “vertically challenged” may have difficulties doing tasks like driving and cooking just to name a few. As one woman reports: “My tummy was so ‘in the way’ that I would actually burn it accidentally while making food on the stove. I also had issues driving because I needed to push the seat back to account for my large bump but then I could barely reach the pedals!”

6 You May Still Feel The Baby Kicking After You Give Birth

Less about getting pregnant and more about post-partum, I felt this truth deserves some attention. As one of the many post-partum weird symptoms, many women report feeling a baby kicking in their tummy after giving birth. This is known as “Phantom Fetal Movements” or “Phantom Kicks”. Though many moms usually face this problem, they feel shy to discuss it with others; and some of them just treat it as their imagination.

There is no established medical reason for this, but there are several general concepts that exist as the reasons for getting phantom baby kicks. First of all, your uterus may take an extended amount of time to stop contractions and settle down after giving birth baby. Another reason is at once you have been pregnant and come to identify ambiances in the uterus for the first time; you are likely to be able to observe random spasms there which occur even when you’re not pregnant. Muscle memory is a powerful thing! Random spams may trigger memories of pregnancy sensations, thus creating this weird and confusing experience.

5 You Will Learn A New Language

Not only will you learn medical terms that you never knew before, the online fertility world has its own language - and if you want to be a part of it, you need to brush up on abbreviations. I remember the first time my husband and I decided to start trying to conceive, I did, of course, what any millennial woman in her early 30s would do: I downloaded 3 different fertility apps and signed myself up! (Yes when it comes to getting pregnant, there’s even an “app for that”.) When I first hopped onto the community section of the app, fellow users were talking in a strange code and I had no idea what they were saying! Acronyms like BFP, AF, DH, DD, CD, etc. (and the list goes on) were being used, leaving me using an acronym of my own: WTF?

As the weeks went on, I began to learn the language of the fertility would (BFP= Big Fat Positive or positive pregnancy test, AF= Aunt Flow etc.) and I settled into the community. But I couldn’t help but wonder why we had to speak in code. Why is it so hard to use normal words? But no one did! If you are embarking on the journey of trying to conceive (TTC) and want some online support, I suggest you visit Google and do a little research into the TTC language, to get a head start. You will be happy you did, trust me!

4 You’ll Find Out Who The Real Friends Are

Just like other milestones such as getting married, starting a family can be a good way of weeding out “fake friends” or rather friends who aren’t true in their comradery and just want something from you. Even if your friends aren’t having babies at the same time as you, you can count on real friends to be supportive. The friends who are true friends will be there with you through your life transitions, even if they aren’t going through the same thing.

As one woman explains: “My husband and I have both lost our best friends since finding out that we are having a baby. I still see my two friends but they are a lot more distant than they were before, and he barely sees his friends at all. They seem to have distanced themselves because they aren’t quite where we are. One of them told him ‘Dude, you're having a kid... we can't just hang out all the time anymore.’ and we were kind of like 'Why not?’ I chalk it down to immaturity”. True friends will stick by you, through thick and thin, no matter what. If you start losing friends, they probably weren't your real friends to begin with.

3 More Likely To Get Pregnant In The First Few Months Of Trying

Practice makes perfect, that’s how the phrase goes. But this may not always be the case when it comes to getting pregnant. When a couple first tries to get pregnant, the chances are about 20 percent at this time, and after a year, the likelihood of conceiving goes down to 3 percent.

As mentioned above, having a baby isn’t as easy as it looks. Even fertile couples with the most timed intercourse only conceive 35 % of the time. That means that every time, when everything is planning exactly right, there is more of a chance that conception won’t happen. So how can couples shift the odds in their favor? My advice is to brush up on “Sex Ed”. Learn about conception, implantation and how hormones play a vital role. Also, eating healthy, exercising and reducing stress, are some of the easier techniques you can implement to help boost your success rate and get pregnant faster.

2 The Position Doesn’t Matter

No, gravity doesn’t play a role in getting you knocked up, though more than one-third of women think specific positions could work better than others. There are countless articles out there that suggest the missionary position or to lie on your back with your legs in the air after sex to increase your chances of conception. Guess what? It really doesn’t matter. “It’s a common myth that a lot of women believe", explains one doctor.

WebMD goes on to explain that when your partner ejaculates, the stronger swimmers are already swimming towards the opening of your cervix within a second of being released. They can travel to meet their destination at 5 mm per minute, that's five body lengths of the sperm per second. So, if we scaled them up to the size of a salmon that would be the equivalent of the salmon swimming along at 500 miles an hour. Sperm are pretty snappy, so relax and enjoy doing the deed instead of trying to do crazy acrobatics to help the little guys along.

1 Finding Out Will Feel Like A Roller Coaster

With the invention of Facebook, you can’t help but see all the pregnancy and baby announcements from all those friends who – let’s face it – you probably haven’t spoken to in years. The announcements come in the happiest of forms and give us a warm and fuzzy feeling. But the reality of it is, finding out you are pregnant can bring on a whirlwind of emotions. Your initial response may be happy but there will no doubt be some anxiety associated with your positive test somewhere along the way. Your brain may be thinking something like: Wait, aren’t I supposed to feel sick? Am I going to get sick? Should I be eating more? Do I need to go buy maternity clothes? Do I need to take this stick to the doctor? When should we tell our friends and family? Oh no, I drank caffeine this morning, is that bad?

The truth is pregnancy is a huge life change, especially if it is your first baby, and it is perfectly normal to be feeling a wide range of emotions. Don’t let those cheerful Facebook posts fool you; those women probably went through the same thing. But in the end, when the excitement has died down, you will come to the realization that there is a little, tiny human, with a beating heart, growing inside your belly and it was formed out of love. If that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is.

Sources: Buzzfeed, WomensHealth, Momtastic, WebMD