The dangers resulting from abortion are blood poison, hemorrhage—even lockjaw has been known to be the result of abortion, also the danger that one miscarriage is likely to follow another, and disables a woman to carry a child to the full term.
If there is the same care and treatment given the woman who aborts as the woman in childbirth, she will naturally be less likely to suffer serious results than if no medical attention were given her.
One of the most common disturbances of pregnancy is nausea, more commonly called “morning sickness,” because it is felt in the morning when the woman first assumes the erect position. As a rule, this lasts only during the early months.
About the latter part of the fourth month, or often not before the fifth month, movements of the foetus are felt. These movements are called “life”, and women are glad of this signal that all is progressing naturally. One writer said a woman had described the first feeling of life as “the trembling movements of a bird within the hand.”
There are often many nervous manifestations accompanying the pregnant woman, such as headache, neuralgia, toothache and as a usual thing, constipation is always present, and should receive attention. The teeth also should receive attention at this time for they decay easily on account of the secretions in the mouth which are increased during pregnancy.
The breasts enlarge in the early months of pregnancy, and there is a fullness and tingling felt often in the fifth week. The nipples become erect and the skin around the nipple becomes dark brown. These are only a few of the disturbances of pregnancy, but enough to show that other organs beside the uterus are tested in strength and how important it is to have a good healthy body. In fact, every tissue and fiber in the woman's body feels the impetus of pregnancy, and all kinds of physical changes occur. Like in June, “Every clod feels a stir of might, an instinct within it that reaches and towers.”—Howell.
One of the common questions asked by young women in early married life is how to tell if they are pregnant.
This is not always easy, but there are a few points on which a diagnosis is based, namely: in a healthy woman (during the reproductive age) the function of menstruation stops, together with the morning sickness, and the enlargement of the breasts with dark color around the nipples. These are early indications that pregnancy exists. I am not going to take the time nor space to explain that all three of the above named can exist in nervous women, even when pregnancy does not exist. It is, as I said before, with the average healthy girl I am dealing, not with the exception. The only certain signs of pregnancy are the hearing of the heart-beats of the child and its movements.
Another question which troubles a young woman is how to count the time when she will be confined. This, too, is difficult to say, for an error of two weeks earlier or later is possible, because the time of conception is seldom definitely known. Experience has given a method of arriving at an approximate date which is used and which answers the purpose fairly well, though it is by no means perfect. Add seven days to the first day of the last menstruation and count nine months forward. For example: Mrs. A. menstruated last, beginning October 5 add seven days; this brings the date to October 12; add nine months, which brings the date of confinement to July 12. It is well to have everything prepared two weeks before this date so that the woman can be as much as possible in the open air during the remaining waiting days.