The young woman who sees her motherhood as a coveted privilege, crowded with happy possibilities, who is willing to bear its inconveniences and take the necessary precautions to insure a satisfactory outcome, is very likely to go through her experience in good health and buoyant spirits. And in the end she will have not only the ecstasy of possessing a beautiful, well baby who has every prospect of continuing so, but as the years pass she will have the satisfaction of knowing that she is a better, more helpful, more companionable mother because of being in good health herself. That is the point of good maternity care—future well-being as well as immediate safety for both mother and baby—and it rests with each woman to decide for herself if she is to have such care. CHAPTER II SIGNS THAT A BABY IS COMING The woman who wants a baby and is in a position to have one is usually eager to know how she can tell when a baby is coming. She wants to know because the baby’s coming means so much to her and also in order that she may know when to consult a doctor. I am sorry to have to admit, at the outset, that making this important discovery is far from being a simple matter. One would suppose, after all these ages, during which countless babies have been born and countless pregnancies have been observed by doctors and others, that there would be some known way of finding out definitely, at an early date, whether or not a baby was coming. But strangely enough, there is no positive evidence of the baby’s existence within his mother’s body until eighteen or twenty weeks after his life there has begun. On the other hand, so many symptoms of pregnancy are known to women, the world over, that very often an expectant mother is correct when she suspects at an early date that she is pregnant, particularly if she has already had a child. But as the well-known symptoms are much like those of various conditions other than pregnancy, even experienced mothers sometimes believe themselves pregnant when they are not. The reverse is true also, for we occasionally hear of a woman who fails to recognize the meaning of the changes which she notices in herself, and is unaware of being pregnant up to the very time of going into labor. And so we find that there are some signs of pregnancy which are only _possible_, since they may be caused by some other conditions; others which may be accepted as _probable_, and a few signs which are _positive_ because they are never due to any cause but pregnancy. The =possible= signs can all be detected by the expectant mother, herself, and may be described as follows: