Have you ever wondered when the average pregnancy starts showing?
Or when pregnancy cravings start?
Or when morning sickness begins and ends?
This post contains 9 different interesting pregnancy statistics that you won’t find anywhere else.
- When pregnancy typically starts showing
- When pregnancy cravings start
- The 10 most common pregnancy cravings
- How common morning sickness is
- When morning sickness starts
- When morning sickness ends
- When women start to feel baby flutters
- How many women experience nesting
- Which trimester is the most difficult
1. When do you start showing in pregnancy?
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When you will start showing in pregnancy depends on a lot of different things, such as if it’s your first pregnancy or not and your pre-pregnancy weight. However, 74% of women believe they started to look visibly pregnant during the third trimester.
According to WebMD (source), a first pregnancy typically will take longer to “show”. A second pregnancy will likely show sooner because your body has already been through the process once before.
Your abdominal muscles have already been previously stretched.
Also, if you are naturally thin, your pregnancy might show sooner because of your narrow body frame.
Can you start showing at 8 weeks?
It’s definitely possible, but not extremely likely. Through our research, we found that 11% of women start to show at some point during the first trimester. It is much more likely that you will begin to show during the 2nd trimester.
When does a baby bump first start to show?
Your baby bump could start to show as early as the first trimester, or as late as the third trimester. However, the overwhelming majority, 74% of women, start to show during the 2nd trimester.
We gathered data from 649 women and discovered the following:
- 11.4% of women start to show during the first trimester
- 38.1% of women start to show in the first half of the second trimester
- 36.5% of women start to show in the second half of the second trimester
- 74.6% of women start to show during the second trimester
- 12.3% of women start to show during the third trimester
- 1.7% of women say that they never looked pregnant
2. When do pregnancy cravings start?
Cravings during pregnancy can start at any time, but typically start during the first trimester. 63.8% of women state that they started to have cravings during the first trimester of pregnancy, with many women saying that their cravings started very early in the first trimester.
We gathered data from 398 women who had pregnancy cravings during their pregnancy, and found that:
- 63.8% of pregnant women start to have cravings in the first trimester (with 35.4% stating that their cravings began very early in the first trimester)
- 27.9% of women started to have cravings in the second trimester
- 8.3% of women started to have cravings in the third trimester
*Please note that data is from women who DID have pregnancy cravings. Not everyone experiences them.
What’s the earliest pregnancy cravings start?
Out of the 63.8% of women who started to have pregnancy cravings in the first trimester, more than half say that pregnancy cravings started very early on in the first trimester (in the third, fourth or fifth weeks of pregnancy).
3. Most Common Pregnancy Cravings
The top 10 most common pregnancy cravings are (in order from least to greatest):
- fruit
- ice
- spicy foods
- ice cream
- pickles
- sweets
- chocolate
- red meat
- cheese
- cereal
Data was collected from 2,595 women who were asked what they craved during pregnancy. Fruit was the craving leader, with 15% of women experiencing fruit cravings. Ice and spicy foods were craved by 12% of participants and coming in at number three, ice cream was craved by 7% of pregnant women.
What’s the weirdest pregnancy craving?
Pica is more common during pregnancy and may be a sign of inadequate nutritional intake. Some of the strangest cravings that pregnant women can have are:
- soil
- dirt
- snow
- the smell of rubber
- coffee grounds
- beach sand
- dog food
4. How common is morning sickness?
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I’m sure you have a lot of morning sickness questions.
The cause of morning sickness is unknown, however morning sickness is extremely common in pregnant women. More than 90% of women experience some form of morning sickness. Some pregnant women experience nausea, while other pregnant women experience both nausea and vomiting.
Should I be worried if I don’t have morning sickness?
You should not be worried if you do not have morning sickness. (You should be thankful!) Our data showed that 9.4% of pregnant women do not experience any form of morning sickness. 1 out of every 10 women have normal pregnancies and do not have morning sickness.
We gathered data from 480 women and discovered that:
- 63.5% of women experience both nausea and vomiting throughout pregnancy
- 27.1% of women experience only nausea
- 9.4% of women do not have morning sickness
5. When does morning sickness start?
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If you’re going to have morning sickness during your pregnancy, it will start sometime during the first trimester. For the majority of women (54%), symptoms of morning sickness begin in week five or six of pregnancy. Morning sickness can start a little earlier or a litter later as well.
How early can morning sickness start?
Morning can absolutely start even before you know you’re pregnant! For some women, it is their first pregnancy symptom. For 22% of women, morning sickness started at 4 weeks of pregnancy or earlier. That’s 1 in 4 women experiencing very early morning sickness.
We gathered data from 518 women who experienced morning sickness and found that:
- Morning sickness started at 4 weeks or earlier for 22% of women
- 54% of the time, morning sickness began at 5 or 6 weeks of pregnancy
- 28% of women who experienced morning sickness started with symptoms at 7-8 weeks
- 6% of the time, morning sickness started after 8 weeks pregnant
Can morning sickness come and go?
Yes, morning sickness can definitely come and go. For some women, nausea or vomiting might occur at a certain time of the day. Other women sometimes experience days where nausea disappears only to return later. It’s normal and nothing to worry about.
Related: Best Snacks For Pregnancy Nausea
6. When does morning sickness end?
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When should morning sickness go away?
For the majority of pregnant women, morning sickness either ends at the end of the first trimester or it lasts until the very end of pregnancy. Statistically, more than half of pregnant women find that their morning sickness goes away in the third or fourth month of pregnancy.
Statistics On When Morning Sickness Ends
We gathered data from 819 women and discovered that:
- morning sickness ended during the first trimester for 30% of women
- morning sickness ended during the second trimester for 37% of women (with the majority, 28%, ending in the first month of the second trimester)
- 3% of women found that morning sickness subsided during the third trimester
- 30% of women experienced morning sickness up until giving birth
Can morning sickness last the entire pregnancy?
Unfortunately, morning sickness lasts throughout the entire pregnancy for 1 in 3 pregnant women. We discovered that 30% of women have morning sickness that lasts the entire pregnancy, but the majority of women find that it goes away during the third or forth month.
7. When do you feel the baby flutter?
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Baby flutters (otherwise known as quickening) are most likely to be felt by pregnant women between 17 and 20 weeks. 47% of women tend to feel the first moments of their baby during this time period. Otherwise, it can be felt earlier or later.
How early can you feel a baby move?
28% of women feel baby flutters before 17 weeks along in pregnancy. If this is your first pregnancy, it will probably take a little longer to start to feel your baby than if your body has already been through pregnancy before.
We gathered data from 1,009 women and determined that:
- 47.4% of women feel the first baby flutters between 17-20 weeks
- 28.5% of women feel the first baby flutters before 17 weeks
- 24.1% of women feel the first baby flutters after 20 weeks
8. Is nesting real?
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Nesting is most definitely real, and is a natural instinct that most pregnant women feel. Almost half of pregnant women feel that they nested to a large extent, which basically means that they did what they could to create a calm, safe space for their baby (source).
Does everyone go through nesting?
Pregnant women will typically nest during the third trimester, but it might occur at other times throughout pregnancy. Male partners can nest, too.
The signs of nesting are usually pretty obvious however while most women do experience nesting in some way, 23% of women do not experience it at all!
We gathered data from 363 women. The data says that:
- 46% of women nest hardcore
- 31% believe that they kind of nested, but not a lot
- 23% of women did not nest at all
Related: Third Trimester Checklist
9. Which trimester is the hardest?
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It is widely believed that the second trimester is the easiest. It’s a little “break” from morning sickness (hopefully) but you haven’t gotten to the extremely uncomfortable part of pregnancy yet. The data shows that the first trimester is harder than the third, but not by much.
Is the 1st or 3rd trimester the hardest?
The answer to this question will be different for everyone, but we asked 851 women. The data shows that:
- 44.5% of women believe that the first trimester is most difficult
- 37% of women believe that the third trimester is most difficult
Which trimester is the easiest?
- 2.9% of women believe that all trimesters were easy
- 2.5 % of women believe that the second trimester was the most difficult.
Overwhelmingly, the second trimester appears to be the easiest.
Also of note: 13% of women believe that all trimesters are equally difficult.
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