Fact: On the day you have sex to make a baby, you are considered two weeks pregnant already. And you can’t possibly even know that you’re pregnant until four or five weeks.

Maybe you can’t wait to have grand-babies to spoil. Or maybe you’re thinking about having kids and are wondering what everyone else’s timeline is. Maybe your co-worker just got married and you’ve already made small talk about their all-inclusive tropical honeymoon and you’re not sure which topic to hit on next, so you go there.

About 10 per cent of women have difficulty getting pregnant or staying pregnant, so chances are good that someone you love is facing or will face infertility. But if you haven’t experienced it yourself (or even if you did but your circumstances were different), it might be hard to know what to say or do to support them.

If you’ve texted, DMed, or spoken aloud the words “birth control” to your friends sometime in the last few years, you’ve probably seen ads proclaiming that there’s an app for that. Several companies promise that tracking your menstrual cycle with their app and their algorithm will help you prevent pregnancy — no hormones, implants, or IUD insertions required.

Lucy Knisley has made a career out of sketching her life. Her latest graphic novel Kid Gloves details her difficult transition into motherhood—from fertility problems to miscarriages to a near-death experience during childbirth. It’s both intimate and highly informative, illustrating the science and history of reproductive health. (I learned that women wore corsets during pregnancy up until the 1910s, which doctors finally starting realising that’s not such a great idea.)

Knisley also just released a picture book called You Are New, which celebrates the joy of being a baby. She lives with her partner John, her kid that she refers to as “Palindrome”, and a cat named Linney. Here’s how she parents.

Amy Schumer has thrown up 980 times since she became pregnant, she told a New York Times reporter. She has hyperemesis gravidarum, and just a few years ago, Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, had the condition too.

On topics from under-boob sweat to Mayochup, Emily Flake has a lot to say. Or, rather, draw. The award-winning cartoonist went from running her comic strip “Lulu Eightball” in alt-weeklies across the country (the jokes were “too vulgar for grown-up publications,” she has said) to regularly drawing for The New Yorker. Her book Mama Tried: Dispatches from the Seamy Underbelly of Modern Parenting depicts the highs, lows and absurdities of life with babies. Here’s how she parents.

Hello! I am back from maternity leave. We had our second child, a boy named Max. It has been the best! It has been the worst! My brain constantly teeters between thoughts of “How did I ever live in a world without this baby?” and “Who thought this would be a good idea again?!”

(It’s mostly the former, though. I’m smitten with the kid.)

I once ran a marathon and gave birth to a baby in the same year, and found them to be, mentally, very similar events. In both cases it doesn’t hurt too much in the beginning, but you know you have to save your strength. You will hit a point where you feel your body can go no further, and yet there is still further to go. And you can never truly predict what will happen in the end.

A few Lifehacker staff members were talking about nesting the other day. You know, that special burst of somewhat frenetic energy that pregnant mums can experience that propels them to get shit ready.

Kathy Radigan’s first-born child is 20 years old, but she remembers the “baby blues” she had with him like it was yesterday.

The conventional guideline for sharing the news of a pregnancy is that you should wait until the ceremonial 12 or 13-week mark, the endpoint of the most anxiety-ridden first trimester when most pregnancy losses are diagnosed. What the rule is really saying is: Don't get too excited. But what if you do have a miscarriage? You're left alone to navigate your tragedy, one that you did nothing to cause, one that so many others have experienced, too.

Sarah Austin wanted to have an unmedicated vaginal delivery, so she and her partner wrote a two-page birth plan at the urging of their nurse midwife. Included in it was the possibility that she might have a caesarean, and how she hoped it would be handled if so. “I considered a C-section not the desired outcome,” says Austin, “but a possible outcome.”

In birth month clubs, a modern phenomenon in which pregnant strangers convene in online groups based on the month of their due dates, something always happens. After nearly a year of commiserating through posts about baby name quandaries and clueless partners and weird shit that happens to your body, you’ll start to see a smattering of birth announcements, accompanied by photos of scrunchy, red-faced newborns.

It’s exciting! New mums are showered with congrats and well wishes. Then, as the weeks go by, you’ll see more announcements. And more photos. Soon, the buzz wears off. Those left standing (or more likely, whimpering in fetal position) start wondering when it’s their turn. Posts take a turn for the desperate. I’m so jealous. I’m so uncomfortable. WHEN WILL I GIVE BIRTH?!

Deciding when to have the second (or third) child can often feel more complicated than having the first.

Close to 30 per cent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, by one estimate. And yet so many mums and dads still suffer in silence. How do you support a friend or family member who has lost a baby? October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and in a powerful Reddit thread, people shared what you can really do to help.

Oh, the highs and lows of pregnancy. As you watch your belly expand (so miraculous!), you simultaneously notice the number of wearable items in your closet dwindle (so frustrating!). But you don’t have to be stuck wearing your partner’s saggiest pair of trackies for the next nine months. Here are our best tips and tricks for dressing comfortably — and even stylishly — as you grow a person.

Video: You can read all the books about what to expect when you’re growing a human inside you, but the fact sheets and stats don’t always tell you the real story.

So, readers, I’m pregnant! Third trimester. Boy. Current physical state: Low and slow. I’m excited, a little overwhelmed and feeling all the feelings.