Second Pregnancy Symptoms

For years, obstetricians have considered the second pregnancy to be the best pregnancy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the easiest or the least painful. “Best” is from the perspective of good health and good outcomes. In the first pregnancy, everything is a trial run. In the second pregnancy, the results of the first pregnancy are known and your pelvis has either been shown to work well or not. In the second pregnancy, comfort and pain could be more prevalent because abdominal muscles would be weaker and would allow for more movement of your uterus and your baby.

If you delivered your first baby vaginally without complications, your pelvis has been demonstrated to be the right shape and size to deliver a baby. That is not a small thing. About one in three pregnancies in the United States now ends in a C-section, and a meaningful fraction of those are done for what is called cephalopelvic disproportion—the concern that the baby is too large for the pelvic outlet. A successful first vaginal delivery has answered that question for you, and it has answered it permanently. The pelvis does not shrink. The bones do not change. Whatever fit your first baby will fit your second.

Weight gain in the second pregnancy is not so much the problem but rather the weight that is not lost after the first pregnancy. After your first pregnancy, your weight can be returned to what it was before your pregnancy with a great amount of effort. After the second pregnancy, it is much more difficult to get back to what you weighed before your second pregnancy, much less your first. Patients often fail to lose 10 or 15 pounds gained in pregnancy, so it looks as if weight gain is greater with the second pregnancy, when you might have started the second pregnancy with 10 or 15 pounds more than with your first.

Abdominal muscles are tightest with the first pregnancy and become looser with each subsequent pregnancy, allowing your baby to move around more. With looser abdominal muscles in subsequent pregnancies, your baby is able to move around more than in previous pregnancies. This enables your baby to pull more on your ligaments, which could cause more pain than in previous pregnancies.

Second labors are dramatically shorter than first labors. The first stage, cervical dilation, typically lasts 6 to 8 hours in a second pregnancy, compared with 12 to 18 hours in a first. The second stage, the pushing phase, often takes only 15 to 30 minutes compared to 1 to 2 hours in a first delivery. Some women have second labors so fast they barely make it to the hospital, which is its own logistical issue. Even if your first labor was long, plan to leave for the hospital earlier rather than later this time.