Your Guide to Being 18 Weeks Pregnant: How did you feel in week 18 of your pregnancy? At 18 weeks, your baby’s legs are now longer than her arms. She’s looking ever more like a proper human being. Now that she’s roughly in proportion, her body will grow at a slower rate. Most of her…
Your Guide to Being 24 Weeks Pregnant: How do you feel at the end of your second trimester? An important milestone this week – your baby is now viable. In other words, she’d have a good (around 40 per cent) chance of survival, with medical help, if she was born right now. Nevertheless, with every…
Your Guide to Being 21 Weeks Pregnant: Your 21 weeks pregnant… how do you feel? Your baby now has fully developed eyelids and eyebrows, and her fingernails have grown to the ends of her fingers. Her skin still looks pink and wrinkly, but is no longer translucent, because fat is being laid down underneath. Your…
Your Guide to Being 16 Weeks Pregnant: This week, your baby will start to blink. She’s growing quickly at the moment, and will double her weight in the next three weeks. Her bones are starting to ossify (harden), with the exception of her skull; these bones will stay softer until the birth, so they can…
Your Guide to Being 11 Weeks Pregnant: How your baby is growing Growth accelerates dramatically, with your baby more than doubling in size over the next month. Fingers and toes lose their webbing and bones begin to harden. Circulatory and urinary systems begin working. And organs start practising the functions they’ll need to undertake later…
Your Guide to Being 9 Weeks Pregnant: How your baby is growing Your baby starts to look more like a baby now, and is beginning to move like one too. The tiny fingers are making grasping movements and exploring everything in range – particularly the umbilical cord, which is usually within easy reach. Touch is…
Your Guide to Being 8 Weeks Pregnant: How your baby is growing The brain is growing rapidly now so your baby’s head is huge in comparison to the body. Muscles start to twitch as they contract, getting ready for independent movement. Bone and cartilage begins to form, and a tiny bud tongue appears. Ears start…
Your Guide to Being 4 Weeks Pregnant: How your baby is growing The stem cells which make up the embryo start to form into specific cells to create your baby’s organs and tissues. Cells at the top begin to form your baby’s nervous system, brain and spinal cord (called the neural tube). Cells in the…
Your guide to the second week of pregnancy What’s happening Oestrogen also thins the mucus in your cervix (the entrance to your womb), to allow your partner’s sperm to swim through into your womb and up the fallopian tubes to meet your egg. Sperm is usually prevented from doing this by the thickness of the…
Your guide to the first week of pregnancy: What’s happening So the first two weeks of your baby’s ‘life’ are spent as an unripened egg inside one of your ovaries and a sperm inside your partner’s testicles. But there’s plenty going on, as your body prepares itself for the beginning of your next monthly cycle….
