12 Week Update!

Okay so my 12 week post is late this week because it's been a CRAZY busy weekends. My weeks change on Fridays so that's when these posts are supposed to be made for future reference.

Anyway, here's 12 weeks!

We've hit a huuuuge milestone this week though because at the end of this week I will officially be in my Second Trimester!!! Yaaaaay!

This week the baby is the size of a:



PLUM!!!

That's right, a plum! That's infinitely better than two weeks ago when it was a prune amirite?

my baby is approximately 2.5 inches long and weighs anywhere between 8 and 14 grams! That's the weight difference between a large egg and two (8 oz) glasses of water! (14 grams is equivalent to 16 ounces in weight!) and the baby is about as long as your pinky finger! WOW!

In the past three weeks the baby's size has DOUBLED! (let's hope that doesn't happen to me in the next three weeks...)



all of the baby's main structures are developed at this point. All of the organs are in place and they're continuing to grow and develop more as time goes on. The skeletal system now has centers of bone formation in most of the bones (whatever that means), the pituitary gland has begun to make hormones and the intestinal system can now push food through the bowels (yay?). The intestines are kinda weird though, they're not all located INSIDE the baby at this point, some are in the umbilical cord.

The baby can squint, open it's mouth and move it's fingers and toes! It's skin is highly sensitive and the baby can feel pain now (awwww! :( that makes me sad!)

the baby could even be sucking it's thumb in there!!



the eyes have finally settled into place in the front of baby's head and the ears are positioned too. The baby can swallow and it practices swallowing by taking gulps of the amniotic fluid (yummy!). The reason the baby can breathe in there is because the baby is getting all of it's oxygen through the bloodstream, it's not even using it's lungs at all!

The baby's chin and nose are becoming defined this week and it's fingernails are growing!



This is cool: the baby is working on reflexes this week...it's learning how to open and close it's hands, clench it's eye muscles (something i don't think i ever learned how to do..?) and curl it's toes. If i were to poke my stomach where the baby is right now, it would squirm and wiggle in response!!

As for me, my uterus is now too large to stay below my pelvic bone and has started moving up...Before I got pregnant, my uterus was almost solid and held less than 0.3 ounces. Now the uterus is more like a muscular container that carries the fetus, the amniotic fluid and the placenta...by the end of pregnancy it will hold almost 40 ounces! scary!

This week I will probably start to show slightly (check) and I will get to leave behind most of the crappy symptoms of the past few weeks (hallelujah)

so yay that's it! At the end of this week I will be in my Second Trimester! Hooray! 196 days until our due date (i'm not crazy, one of my tickers told me that this morning lol)