The object of this chapter is to remove this difficulty, by presenting a short account of those symptoms of conception which the female may herself observe, and to point out to what extent they may be relied on. It will be necessary to notice only four of the signs or symptoms of pregnancy, and they may be considered in the order in which they usually arise; that is, ceasing to be unwell; morning sickness; shooting pains through, enlargement of, and other changes of the breast; and, lastly, quickening.
Ceasing to be unwell.
The first symptom of pregnancy is the omission of that monthly return, which, in female phraseology, would be described as “ceasing to be unwell;” and it may be adopted as a general rule, that, in a healthy woman, whose menstruation has been established, and continued regular, and who is not nursing, “Conception is followed by a suppression of the menstrual discharge at the next return of its period.” Thus, a female may have been pregnant a week or two already; but she is not aware of it till that period of the month arrives when she is accustomed to menstruate, and then, when she expects to be unwell, she finds that she is not so.
Now this symptom, as a general rule, admits of four exceptions:—
First. A young female shall never have menstruated, and yet conceive.
Secondly. A mother shall conceive while she is nursing, and not menstruating.
Thirdly. A female shall conceive, and yet be unwell during the first three, four, or more months of pregnancy.
Fourthly, and lastly. Occasional conception takes place late in life, after menstruation has apparently ceased for ever.
First Exception.—Many cases are on record proving this point. I have met with only two cases; one quite a girl, not having arrived at her seventeenth year, and yet was in her sixth month of pregnancy when she applied for a letter for the Finsbury Midwifery Institution; the other was in her nineteenth year. Menstruation was, subsequent to confinement, established in the first; with the result of the latter, I am not acquainted.[[9]]
Although pregnancy under such circumstances is not of frequent occurrence, still it does now and then take place. A knowledge of the fact may therefore prove useful.