Your Baby’s Development
This week your baby’s brain will experience enormous growth, producing up to 250,000 new cells every minute. The rest of her body is growing, too; she’s now about the size of a small plum, and weighs about half an ounce. This week marks Baby’s last week as an embryo; next week she’ll officially become a fetus.
At this point you can relax a bit, because any abnormalities that could develop in your baby are much less likely to occur after the tenth week. Of course, you’ll still want to make healthy lifestyle choices — avoiding drugs, X-rays, alcohol, cigarettes and toxins that could harm Baby’s developing cells.
This week, there’s a lot of activity going on:
• Tooth buds for baby teeth will begin forming inside the mouth.
• Reproductive organs and external genitals will be formed, although it will still be too early to determine gender.
• The nervous system will continue to develop and many of the internal organs will begin to function.
• The intestines, which have been developing inside the umbilical cord, have now begun moving into Baby’s abdominal cavity.
• Taste buds will begin to appear on the surface of the tiny tongue.
• Eyelids are almost closed over the tiny eyes, which have already developed some of the color they’ll have at birth.
• The upper lip will form completely.
• Most of the joints will form (elbow, wrists, knee, shoulder and ankle).
Your Development
Despite your baby’s growth spurt, you can probably still wear your regular clothes. Very little of your total pregnancy weight gain (usually between 25 to 35 pounds for a single baby) occurs during the first three months. If you’re still feeling tired and a little sick, try to focus on the fact that in just a few more weeks you’ll probably be feeling a lot better!
