'Super Powers' Women Have While Pregnant

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Sure, you can’t move around as gracefully while you’re pregnant, and there’s little chance you’ll make it through the entire movie without falling asleep – upright and fully dressed. But there are some amazing things you may discover that body can do when you’re expecting. Singer Kelly Clarkson swears she’s able to sing better, for instance. “When you’re pregnant you just feel everything like 100 times more than normal,” the performer recently told USA Today about recording her new album while expecting. “I was just more passionate. The vocals were more intense and I loved recording. I kept telling my husband the next record I have to be knocked up.”

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Clarkson isn’t alone in feeling like pregnancy charged her up. “Women can feel ‘different’ and in some instances get the perception of increased acuity of her senses,” Dr. Jose Carugno, an assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine tells Yahoo Parenting. “It also affects the brain,” he adds. “Research has also shown that it functions differently during pregnancy, increasing activity associated with emotional skills to facilitate the bonding process with the newborn.”

Yahoo Parenting took an informal poll among friends and asked women on Facebook to reveal the “super powers” they experienced during pregnancy. “I was hyper focused and able to accomplish a lot,” says Micole Cohen Richter. “It was my power to organize closets.”

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Having an amazing sense of smell is a prime example. “Mine was insane,” says Marla Garfield. “I was on the subway one morning and smelled that someone was wearing Vicks VapoRub – on the other end of the car.” Shayne Melchin Dorr likens her sniff-ability to that of superhero Wolverine, while Jaime McGovern Dempsey insists that she “could smell what was in my refrigerator, people smoking in cars driving on the road near me, and wine from another room. It was crazy!”

Pregnant women share this sensory experience often, says Shari Brasner, MD, assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. The sensitivity is reportedly linked to estrogen, which is elevated during pregnancy. “Heightened sense of smell usually relates to a woman’s first trimester nausea, cravings and aversions,” she tells Yahoo Parenting. “Symptoms usually resolve early in the second trimester, as does the nausea. I am convinced that they are tied to each other but it has not been proven.” Food for thought: There is a study that reportedly found that women born without a sense of smell didn’t suffer morning sickness at all while pregnant.

Turbo taste is another oft-cited power. “Mine was really acute,” Garfield adds. “Whenever I ate something with sugar, I could taste every grain of it to the point where it got annoying.” Research out of San Diego State University, USA and Umeå University in Sweden finds that 76 percent of pregnant women reported abnormal smell and/or taste perception. They describe it as having an “abnormal taste sensitivity in the early stages of pregnancy, including a heightened sensitivity to bitter items and a lowered sensitivity to salty items.” Postpartum, the women reported sensitivity was “almost absent.”

Hearing also gets a boost while you’re expecting. “I could hear a pin drop,” says Christin Sno Grom. Comparing pregnant women to non-pregnant women, another study found moms-to-be had such differing reactions to sound that they experienced greater changes in blood pressure while listening to it. “Every acoustic manipulation of music affects blood pressure in pregnant women far more intensely than in non-pregnant women,” researcher Tom Fritz of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig writes in the German research organization’s publication of the same name.

And finally there’s the “Spidey Sense” of intuition. “Mine has been very strong this time around,’ says pregnant mother-of-one Cait Bauer.  “I’ve experienced lots of gut feelings that I’m glad I’ve acted on.” One morning she considered finishing her toddler son’s breakfast leftovers before instinct told her no. “I remember thinking, ‘What if he’s sick?’  He was acting fine, but several hours later, sure enough, our sitter called to tell me he was running a fever. Sensing he was sick before he even showed symptoms has happened twice actually.” Bauer also frequently wakes up a few minutes before her son does, “as if my body just knows that my baby is going to need me,” she adds. “And that has only happened since becoming pregnant.”

What “powers” have you experienced while expecting? Tell Yahoo Parenting in the comments.

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