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Early pregnancy symptoms can vary a lot from one woman to the next. Most symptoms don't show up until about four weeks to six weeks at the very earliest. But early pregnancy symptoms are the same as symptoms for lots of other things, so you can not tell if you're pregnant or not from symptoms alone, you'd need to take a test.

As for flying around and falling down, if you were pregnant right now the baby would just be a tiny little bundle of cells tucked way inside your body and protected by all your skin, organs, etc.

Alcohol and pregnancy are a horrible mix. No amount of alcohol has been proven safe for fetuses. But that doesn't mean every fetus exposed to alcohol will have problems. Babies are shockingly fragile and resilient at the same time. So don't beat yourself up about drinking one time when you didn't know you were pregnant, that happens to a lot of women. But definitely stop drinking now that you might be pregnant. You can read more about alcohol and pregnancy here: http://www.marchofdimes.com/professionals/14332_1170.asp

And if you find out you're not pregnant, you should still not be drinking if you're planning on trying in four months since four months isn't that far away! whee And of course make sure you are not smoking or doing any drugs. If you are on any over the counter or prescription medication, you need to ask your doctor if it is safe to take during pregnancy. And a lot of people don't realize that the guy needs to watch what he does too. Guys should not smoke, drink, or do drugs for at least one month before trying to conceive.

You're right, hormonal birth control isn't good for babies. So it's good that you stopped since you're not sure if you're pregnant. However, I would recommend using condoms just in case you're not pregnant yet. Because even though you two are planning on trying for a baby soon, it sounds like you both could probably use quite a bit more time to research, ask questions, talk to an ob-gyn, and get your systems clean. If you find out you're not pregnant, you might want to get back on hormonal birth control for a while until you two have a fair amount of research under your belts. A lot of people don't realize that they should talk to an ob-gyn and take prenatal vitamins before they even start trying, so make sure you're on top of that too.

Women don't make new eggs during their life; we're born with all of our eggs. That means women should ideally never smoke or take illegal drugs, especially if they want children. Even over the counter or prescription drugs should really only be used when necessary. That's because everything we put into our body circulates and has an effect of some sort. And those things can get into our eggs and mutate our genetic information. Most of it doesn't make a huge difference, but the problem is that this stuff adds up. Maybe you've heard that it's not recommended for women over 40 to have babies because of the increased risk of Down's Syndrome and other genetic problems? Well, that's why; as a woman gets older her eggs are exposed to more garbage. And even if you're thinking, "Well, I'm not going to have a baby after 40," you still want your eggs and genetic information to be as clean as possible for your baby, right? biggrin You can't avoid it all (some of it is from x-rays, air pollution, necessary medication, etc.) but you certainly don't want to add to it with avoidable things like cigarettes. Now that's not to make it sound like, "OMG, you smoked, you can never have children!!" of course. It's just to say that the less crap in your body, the better. So while the ideal is to never smoke, quitting is obviously good too.

Men do make new sperm. They make it pretty often. But the genetic information in their sperm can still be mutated if they happened to be doing drugs or smoking while their body was making that batch of sperm. So while we women should ideally stay clean our whole lives (or for as much of our lives as possible), men only have to stay clean one month before trying to conceive (and for as long as it takes to conceive of course). Staying clean during that time decreases the chances that he'll have weak or mutated sperm. When the sperm is strong and healthy, that increases the chance of conceiving a healthy baby.

Personally, I'd suggest asking him to quit for good since he has to quit for at least a couple months anyway. Because even if he didn't directly smoke around you or the baby, smoke still clings to clothes, furniture, the inside of your car, etc. And there's a lot of stuff in that smoke that no one should breathe in, especially children and pregnant women. Parents who smoke are also more likely to have children who grow up to be smokers, and I don't know anyone who actually wants that for their child. And the most obvious issue with parents who smoke is that, on average, they don't live as long. And I hate to see people lose their parents, or any loved one for that matter, at a young age from such a preventable cause.