If you have an ultrasound now, you may notice your baby sucking his/her thumb. The bones are getting harder each day. The baby's skin is very thin and transparent; you can see blood vessels through the skin. Lanugo, a very fine hair, covers the body and will continue growing on the baby until around the 26th gestational week of pregnancy. Maternal Changes: Your uterus will begin rising past your hipbones any time now. You can feel it about three to four inches below your navel. During your appointments, your care provider will be measuring "fundal height" to make sure your baby is growing consistently and adequately. Fundal height is the distance from the top of the uterus (fundus) to the pubic bone.

Boy or Girl? Should We Find Out?

If you have an ultrasound in the next few weeks, the technician may be able to make an "educated guess" at the gender of your baby. (Keep in mind, gender determination via ultrasound is not 100% reliable and is only as good as the person doing the scan.) If you have an amniocentesis, gender can be reliably determined via the chromosomes. Neither of these tests are performed (or should be performed) just to find out the baby's sex. If your care provider recommends these tests for various reasons, ask yourself if you really want to know your baby's gender. The majority of parents nowadays do want to know, but if you love a special surprise, it's perfectly okay to tell the tech/care provider that you do NOT want to know the gender. Read what other StorkNet readers said about this

Ideas for Dad:

Make sure you hug mom often. Research tells us that the more hugs mom gets, the more she'll hug the baby (and you too)!

Inspirational Thoughts:

A baby is someone just the size of a hug. ~Anonymous

Reading:

Body, Soul, and Baby: A Doctor's Guide to the Complete Pregnancy Experience, From Preconception to Postpartum by Tracy W. Gaudet, MD, published by Bantam, 2008.

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