It is sometimes hard to know whether you're pregnant or not. Especially, if you have an irregular cycle. Your body may not give away any hints even after your period is late by a couple of weeks.

If you're not keeping track of your menstrual cycle or if it varies widely from one month to the next, you may not be sure when to expect your period. But if you start to experience some of the symptoms below - not all women get them all - and you haven't had a period for a while, you may very well be pregnant. Take a home pregnancy test to find out for sure!

10. Swollen, tender breasts One early sign of pregnancy is due to increasing levels of oestrogen. You may have sore breasts. It will be a little worse than what you might experience normally before a period. It will get better after the first trimester.

9. Tiredness Suddenly feeling shattered? The rapid adjustments in your hormone levels and changing metabolic needs of having to support two lives will make you sleepy. Hopefully, by month four, you will be feeling a little better. Make sure that you don't put on too much weight during you pregnancy as you might find it hard to sleep later on and so your tiredness can return later in the pregnancy.

8. Implantation bleeding Some women have a small amount of vaginal bleeding around 11 or 12 days after conception (close to the time you might notice a missed period). The bleeding may be caused by the fertilized egg burrowing into the blood-rich lining of your uterus - a process that starts just six days after fertilization - but no one knows for sure. The bleeding is very light (appearing as red spotting or pink or reddish-brown staining) and lasts only a day or two. (Let your practitioner know if you notice any bleeding or spotting, particularly if it's accompanied by pain, since this can be a sign of an ectopic pregnancy.)

7. Morning sickness Actually, pregnancy related nausea can occur at any time of the day. It is due to your oesophageal muscles being more relaxed with the increased progesterone. This is obviously more of a problem, when you have been lying down all night - hence mornings are worse. It usually starts about the 2nd month and gets better by about 18 weeks.

6. Noticing strange smells more strongly In early pregnancy, you will find that pungeant smells affect you immensely. They are likely to make you intensely nauseous and repelled. The mechanism for this phenomenon is unclear.

5. Abdominal bloating Hormonal changes in early pregnancy may leave you feeling bloated, similar to the feeling some women have just before their period arrives. That's why your clothes may feel snugger than usual at the waistline, even early on when your uterus is still quite small.

4. Going to the toilet a lot During pregnancy, you will have an increase in your blood volume to help you support another life. This increased fluid in your blood system will lead to you wanting to go to the toilet a lot to pass water. This tends to start at about week 6 and gets worse as your baby gets bigger and presses on your bladder.

3. A missed menstrual period Those of us with a menstrual cycle that runs with military precision, may find that this is the first sign that they are pregnant.

2. Your basal body temperature stays high If you've been charting your basal body temperature and you see that your temperature has stayed elevated for 18 days in a row, you're probably pregnant.

Lastly - 1. A positive pregnancy test Today's testing kits are fairly accurate. Sometimes they can suggest that you aren't pregnant if they are tested too early. So if you are certain that you are pregnant, but the test says no - test it again in a few days.