Thursday, March 6, 2008

My Baby..Month by Month

6 month
Eye brows are forming now and the lanugo darkens in color. Your baby is moving and practicing breathing for when he or she will be born. The practice contractions that you may or may not notice don’t bother your baby one bit. Your baby may or may not be head down, because of the amniotic fluid your baby can move all around still.
Your baby is also depositing brown fat. The brown fat will help him or her regulate body temperature at birth. This brown fat will continue to be laid down until birth.
S/he weighs in at 1 lb 5 ounces (595 grams) and 30 cms or 11.8 inches total length. A few babies are born this early. They do have some chance of survival depending on many factors.

5 month

No new organ structures are really forming at this point in pregnancy. Though the pads of the fingers and toes are forming. Your baby is also developing his or her finger prints. Your baby is also forming permanent teeth buds behind the baby teeth that are already formed. A baby girl will also begin to develop primitive eggs in her ovaries. Gender is usually visible by ultrasound, though accuracy varies.
Your baby’s movements may be more apparent. Loud noises may even cause your baby to startle. It’s still pretty unusual for your to be able to feel your baby move at this point unless this is not your first pregnancy. You may be aware of sleep wake cycles in your little one.
Your baby is also covered in a fine hair called lanugo and may begin to develop a lotion like substances on their skin called vernix. The weight is now up to 10 ounces (283 grams) and the baby measures about 25 cms total length, about 9.8 inches

4 month

The placenta has taken over production of the hormones needed to sustain your pregnancy. Your baby is also making some of its own insulin and bile. Your baby even urinates into the amniotic fluid in small amounts every 45 minutes or so.
Your baby’s heart pumps about 25 quarts of blood a day. This will increase to be about 300 quarts by the end of your pregnancy. All of the teeth have formed and you even have a scalp hair pattern!
Your baby is about 3 ounces (85 grams) and 6.3 inches (16 cms). The gender may be detectable by ultrasound. Though gender predictions at this point are much harder to rely on.

3 month

During the third month of your pregnancy, your baby’s bones begin to ossify or harden. Your baby is already moving spontaneously, but you usually can’t feel these movements for awhile yet. Your baby’s eyes are large and open. Eyelids will form later. External ears have formed.
External genitalia begin to differentiate, though it’s still very difficult to tell whether your baby is a girl or a boy without genetic screening. Your baby moves from being an embryo to the fetal period, now called a fetus. S/he also loses their tail!
Your baby’s head is the biggest part of their body. It is about 1/2 the size of the rest of the body. While the head is large, the brain’s structure is similar to what it will be at birth. S/he weighs about 14 grams and is approximately 3.54 inches in total length. By the end of this month you should be able to hear your baby’s heart beat with a Doppler

2 month

The second month of pregnancy is a critical month in fetal development. Your baby goes from being a blastocyst to an embryo. Early on in this month your baby’s heart will begin to beat. First it beats slowly, then very rapidly, later in pregnancy the heart rate will slow a bit more.
In the beginning of this month it’s hard to tell which way is up on your baby. As this month progresses it becomes very easy to tell which end is your baby’s head is and which end is your baby’s bottom. By the end of the month your baby’s upper and lower limb buds will also appear. And the primordia of the liver, pancreas, lungs, and stomach are evident. While your baby is a girl or a boy, it is not yet apparent without genetic screening.
Your baby is now measuring between 8-11 mm from crown to rump (CRL). By the end of this month heart activity is always present on ultrasound. Toe and finger rays are present, though not quite enough for you to count yet.

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