New England Sun-Times

14 weeks pregnant What to expect this week What's happening in week 14 You are now in your second trimester and your baby is beginning to be a real 'individual' – even down to gaining their own unique set of fingerprints! Your baby at week 14 Size-wise, your little one is around 8cm long or around half a banana in length, weighing 42 grams and growing bigger and stronger every day. Your baby’s arms are now in proportion with their body, but their legs still have a bit more growing to do until your baby is fully in proportion. Your baby is really starting to take on the look of a real little person now, with their hair and eyebrows beginning to grow, and they’re starting to develop their own set of fingerprints in place on their tiny fingers! They’ll be making the most of these tiny digits and might now be able to suck their thumb. Not only that, brain impulses have them squi...

13 weeks pregnant What to expect this week What's happening in week 13 Week 13 is here, and you are probably sharing the news of your pregnancy with anyone who'll listen! Your baby at week 13 Your baby is around 7.5cm long and about the size of an egg, weighing about 25g. Even at this small size they’ve already learned some party tricks – kicking their legs, turning their head – even swallowing, yawning and hiccupping! How amazing is it that they are so active and developed, yet so tiny? In week 13, your baby’s skeleton is starting to develop with the clavicle (collarbone) and femur (thigh bone) developing first. Along with the skeleton, their organs continue to grow with their stomach and bowel taking shape as well as their vocal chords (which will get a lot of use in a few months’ time!) Your baby’s lungs are also developing and in week 13 they’ll start to take their first few ‘b...

12 weeks pregnant What to expect this week What's happening in week 12 You are in the final week of your first trimester and your baby has changed beyond all recognition from week one! Your baby at week 12 Your tiny baby is now a compact 6cm in length, and fully formed – the next stage of their development is to grow larger and practise sucking and breathing motions.. It’s likely you’ll see your baby for the first time this week at your dating scan , though it’s unlikely you will be able to get a reliable sexing just yet. They are moving around a lot at this stage, but you still won't be able to feel this for a while as they still have a lot of space to bob about in. Their eyelids remain fused shut at week 12 (they will open at around week 27) and have moved to their final position on the front of the head (rather than the side), while their little wrists and elbows bend as they move ar...

11 weeks pregnant What to expect this week What's happening in week 11 At 11 weeks, your baby is starting to look like a real little person and you might even have the tiniest hint of a bump! Your baby at week 11 It won't be long before your baby is fully formed even at only 4cm long, and will then spend the rest of the pregnancy growing (as will you!). They already have little fingernails in place and their hands will soon start to open and close. Though it’s still too soon to tell the gender by ultrasound, your tiny baby will be starting to form testes or ovaries. At 11 weeks your baby’s head is already quite well developed and all the bones in their face are now present. Around this time the ears will have migrated closer to their final location, the tongue and palate will be present in the mouth and there will be open nasal passages at the tip of their nose. Meanwhile the hair foll...

9 weeks pregnant What to expect this week What's happening in week nine You are now nine weeks into your pregnancy – so what's happening with you and your baby now? Your baby at week nine As you enter week 9 your baby will transition from the embryonic stage to the foetal period. At this point they’ll be about one inch long and the size of a large bean or olive. Your baby's organs, nerves and muscles are all starting to function now and although you won’t be able to feel it, their tiny heart is now beating strong enough to be picked up by ultrasound devices like a Doppler, although this isn’t always possible depending on the position of your baby in the uterus. Their ears are also starting to develop, and their eyelids are now in place but will be fused shut until week 26 . Meanwhile their little fingers and toes are starting to change from being titchy buds into actual digits. Y...

8 weeks pregnant What to expect this week What's happening in week eight Two months into your pregnancy and you are no doubt now feeling lots of changes. Your baby at week eight At eight weeks your baby is around two centimetres long now – still minuscule, but growing and developing every day. At this point in your pregnancy your baby is growing at around 1 millimetre per day, and the amniotic fluid in your womb increases by two tablespoons a week. After week eight your baby is officially called a ‘foetus’ which means ‘offspring’, but is still getting nutrition from the yolk sac rather than the placenta. Over the next few weeks the placenta will develop, forming structures called ‘chorionic villi’ which help attached the placenta to the womb wall. Your baby’s  tiny little fingers and toes will have formed, though right now they are webbed and will continue to be so for several weeks, an...

7 weeks pregnant What to expect this week What's happening in week seven Seven weeks in and your unborn baby is coming on in leaps and bounds. Your baby at week seven Your baby is continuing to grow at a remarkable pace, its embryonic form is slowly starting to transform into an actual little person, with emerging arm and leg buds, and a beating heart – how amazing? They also have a tiny tail – but that will soon disappear! Amazingly your baby has already gone through three sets of kidneys by week 7, but this week they’ll start developing their final set which will be ready for waste management. In the coming weeks your baby will start to produce urine which will form part of the amniotic fluid. Size-wise, your baby is now about 1cm in size and not much bigger than a little bean, bobbing around in your womb. You at seven weeks pregnant Seven weeks in, you might be coming to terms with,...

6 weeks pregnant What to expect this week What's happening in week six Six weeks in and the changes in your growing baby (and your body) continue big time. Your baby in week six If you can imagine a tiny poppy seed, that’s the size of your growing baby's heart now. Around week six their heart is changing from being a simple, single tube to a complex four chamber organ which will pump blood around their body. How amazing! At six weeks the heartbeat of your baby might be detectable by an ultrasound – it’s currently beating at around 160 beats per minute – almost twice as fast as your heart. Your baby will now be covered by a thin layer of see-through skin, while all your baby's vital organs – the kidneys, lungs and liver – are now in place too, but they still have a lot of developing left to do. The little buds which will eventually become their arms and legs are also starting to gr...

5 weeks pregnant What to expect this week What's happening in week five Five weeks in, and you might now be feeling quite a few of the signs of pregnancy! Your baby at five weeks How annoying is it when unborn babies' growth is described in terms of fruit or vegetables? Very, but sorry, your little one is currently rocking an apple pip vibe in terms of size – but not for long! At five weeks gestation, they will be around 5mm long, and their heart, brain and spine will be developing at a pace. Soon, your baby's heart will actually start beating, and if you have an early scan in the coming weeks, you would see it flickering on the monitor. Your baby’s head is also seeing signs of development with the neural tube developing (the start of the connection between their spinal cord and brain) which will help to regulate your baby’s vital functions along with heart rate and blood supply....

4 weeks pregnant It's still early days, many still won't know they are pregnant What's happening in week four It's still early days, many still won't know they are pregnant. Your baby in week four Your growing baby is not even 3mm long yet and still not much bigger than a poppy seed. Despite the tiny size there’s plenty going on as the embryo splits into three different sections. In one section the brain and central nervous system are already beginning to take shape as their neural tubes develop. In the other two sections, the heart and circulatory system are already beginning to form and the lungs and intestines are in the very early stages of development. How amazing is it that all this is going on totally undetectable to the outside world? (and maybe even you at this point!) You at four weeks pregnant You might feel some pregnancy symptoms at four weeks, but there ...

3 weeks pregnant What to expect this week What's happening in week three You are three weeks into your pregnancy – here's the science bit! Your baby in week three Three weeks into your pregnancy, and you might be wondering just how this little miracle occurred (as in the science bit – we'll assume you know the other part!). So here goes: the joining of your partner's sperm and your egg at the moment of conception resulted in a ball of cells (or a blastocyst, if you want to get really technical) which is now starting the 6 day journey from the fallopian tube to the uterus where it will attach itself to the lining of your womb – and in nine months’ time, will result in a real live baby in your arms! Amazingly, although you won’t know for a few months (or until the birth) the sex of your baby has already been determined. The fertilised egg contains 46 chromosomes with 23 from...

2 weeks pregnant What to expect this week What's happening in week two Although you might not feel pregnant, your body is producing bucket loads of pregnancy hormones, and your baby is growing faster than it will at any other time of your pregnancy. All this at just two weeks along! How exciting? You at two weeks pregnant By the time your period is due, you will have been pregnant for around two weeks, yet any inkling that you might be will probably come from wondering when your period is going to show, rather than actually feeling any symptoms.  Start on the folic acid supplements if you suspect you might be pregnant at this point as they will help protect your growing baby from spinal cord defects. Your baby in week two Your baby's sex has already been decided, and their major organs are all beginning to form. Because of how pregnancy is calculated, you are actually already one mont...

1 week pregnant What to expect this week What's happening in week one It is highly unlikely you even know you are pregnant right now – but there are a whole lot of things already going on with you and your unborn baby. Your baby at week one Your son or daughter – because yes, their sex is already decided this early! – is growing faster now than at any other point in your pregnancy, and their brain, heart and spine are already forming. It's doubtful you are feeling any signs of their presence this early though. You at one week pregnant If you have been trying to conceive, you've hopefully been taking folic acid supplements already, but if you haven't, now's the time to start – check out our nutrition and supplements page to find out why this is so important for your developing baby. And guess what – because of how pregnancy is calculated, at this stage, just a week into your...