Today I'm 13 weeks, 4 days. There's not much new to report, except that my belly seems to have grown over the past week. (Or maybe it's just the horizontal stripes.)
Here's what the baby has been working on this week:
Week 13
Fingerprints have formed on your baby's tiny fingertips, her veins and organs are clearly visible through her still-thin skin, and her body is starting to catch up with her head — which makes up just a third of her body size now. If you're having a girl, she now has more than 2 million eggs in her ovaries. Your baby is almost 3 inches long (the size of a medium shrimp) and weighs nearly an ounce.
We found out right before Thanksgiving that we're going to be parents. It made for an exciting holiday season--first keeping this new and overwhelmingly exciting information to ourselves, then spilling the beans to our families at Christmas celebrations. Needless to say, everyone is just about as excited as you could imagine. We're overjoyed, too.
We had our first appointment with the midwife on January 2. Baby Tootle's due date is July 31. Stephen and I got to hear baby's heartbeat and see him or her via ultrasound. It was surreal to watch baby stretching tiny arms and kicking tiny legs in there. I don't know how I thought I would respond, but the delighted laughter that came out of my mouth surprised me! This, of course, made my belly move and messed up the ultrasound. So I had to stop right away, not wanting to miss any more viewing time of our little one!
Now, three months along, I'm feeling really good. While I was really blessed to not have horrible morning sickness, some of the discomforts of the first few months are going away now. My energy, and ability to stay up past 8 p.m., is returning. Exercise seems feasible. My appetite is still surprisingly huge, but I'm not as ravenously hungry as I was a month ago. But so far, I have enjoyed using pregnancy as an excuse for eating everything in sight--with a real effort to make most of this healthy food.
I have loved reading about the baby's week-by-week development. Here's some info about what the baby was up to over the last week or so: Week 12
The most dramatic development this week: reflexes. Your baby's fingers will soon begin to open and close, his toes will curl, his eye muscles will clench, and his mouth will make sucking movements. In fact, if you prod your abdomen, your baby will squirm in response, although you won't be able to feel it. His intestines, which have grown so fast that they protrude into the umbilical cord, will start to move into his abdominal cavity about now, and his kidneys will begin excreting urine into his bladder.
Meanwhile, nerve cells are multiplying rapidly, and in your baby's brain, synapses are forming furiously. His face looks unquestionably human: His eyes have moved from the sides to the front of his head, and his ears are right where they should be. From crown to rump, your baby-to-be is just over 2 inches long (about the size of a lime) and weighs half an ounce.
My body is also changing. I now have a little baby bump, that to me, is starting to look more like an early pregnant belly than just flab. (If you disagree, don't tell me!)
It's hard to believe that in about six months, we'll have a tiny newborn baby to take care of. We're definitely conscious that our life is going to change in about 6,532,453 huge ways. We're savoring this time of just the two of us, but we're both so excited and happy and ready for this new phase in our lives.
