WEEK 14

This week's big developments: Our baby can now squint, frown, grimace, pee, and possibly suck its thumb! Thanks to brain impulses, its facial muscles are getting a workout as its tiny features form one expression after another. Its kidneys are producing urine, which it releases into the amniotic fluid around it — a process it will keep up until birth. It can grasp, too, and if you're having an ultrasound now, you may even catch it sucking its thumb.
In other news: Our baby's stretching out. From head to bottom, it measures 3 1/2 inches — about the size of a lemon — and it weighs 1 1/2 ounces. Its body's growing faster than its head, which now sits upon a more distinct neck. By the end of this week, its arms will have grown to a length that's in proportion to the rest of its body. (Its legs still have some lengthening to do.) Its starting to develop an ultra-fine, downy covering of hair, called lanugo, all over its body. Our baby's liver starts making bile this week — a sign that it's doing its job right — and its spleen starts helping in the production of red blood cells. Though I can't feel his tiny punches and kicks yet, its little pugilist's hands and feet (which now measure about 1/2 inch long) are more flexible and active.