It is evident that by teaching the principles of personal hygiene to the expectant mother so convincingly that she will adopt them, and sometimes, by employing simple nursing procedures to relieve the various discomforts of pregnancy, much will be accomplished toward promoting the welfare of both the patient and the expected baby. But this is not enough. The nurse must also be on the alert to detect and report the early symptoms of complications, for there may be times when she will be the first one to see the patient after a symptom has developed. The principal complications of pregnancy which are amenable to preventive or early treatment are the toxemias, premature terminations of pregnancy and hemorrhage. The causes of these conditions and the details of treatment and nursing care are so inextricably associated with each other that they are discussed together and at some length in another chapter. But their most conspicuous, early signs are briefly noted here, since watching for them constitutes a part of routine prenatal care. The =toxemias= are apparently caused by disturbed metabolism and impaired or inadequate excretory processes. Their prevention is to be accomplished largely by observing the principles of personal hygiene previously described, and in quickly treating early symptoms. One of the commonest of these symptoms is headache, sometimes persistent and very severe. Others are disturbed vision, dizziness and more persistent or severe vomiting than could reasonably be called “morning sickness”; puffiness under the eyes, or elsewhere about the face, or of the hands; anything more than very slight swelling of the feet and ankles; high or increasing blood pressure; mental depression; albumen in the urine, amounting to more than a trace, and epigastric pain, are all possible symptoms of toxemia. A patient in whom even one of these symptoms appears is usually placed under close observation; frequently put to bed and her diet restricted to milk, or even water, until the symptoms subside. The common symptoms of =premature termination of pregnancy=, (an abortion, miscarriage or premature labor) are bleeding, with or without pain in the small of the back, followed by cramp-like pains in the abdomen. Bleeding or a bloody discharge, therefore, irrespective of pain should be regarded as a symptom of pending labor and the patient should be put to bed promptly, and kept quiet. Preventive treatment, after pregnancy has begun, consists largely of rest, particularly at the time when menstruation would ordinarily occur; avoidance of physical shocks and of overwork during the later weeks. Prolonged failure on the part of the patient to feel fetal movements or of the nurse or doctor to hear the fetal heartbeat after they have once been manifest usually indicates the death of the child and precedes its expulsion.