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Embryo Development
A Month by Month Look at How Baby Grows
By Katherine Bontrager
Yet just two weeks later at 18 weeks, the fetus weighs over 6 ounces, the same as a tin of tuna fish, and is about the same size as the placenta, Dr. Greenfield says. "Fingerprints start to develop," she says. "The baby is starting to take in sounds and light, so while you're trying to feel your baby move, your baby also is starting to perceive you."
Dr. Patton says that, contrary to the first trimester, which is exciting because all kinds of new things are being formed, the second trimester is generally kind of a quiet. "The fetus grows from about 4 inches long to about 12 inches long, measuring head to foot, and grows from about 3 ounces to around 2.5 pounds. Our bodies grow more than our heads do at this point, so we start to look more normally proportioned."
Dr. Robert Atlas, the chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Md., says that at approximately 20 weeks the fetus is somewhere around 10 ounces. That's roughly the size of a can of soup.
"Girls' ovaries already have all their eggs; boys' testes, although still located in the abdomen, have begun to descend toward the scrotum," Dr. Greenfield says. "The fetal nerves are becoming coated with myelin, a fatty material that speeds nerve signal transmission. The baby has periods of sleep and waking and on an ultrasound may be seen sucking its thumb."
At 22 weeks, Dr. Greenfield says, the fetus is just under a pound and about 9 inches long and fine hair called lanugo covers the head and body. "The brain growth accelerates – and continues at a rapid pace until age 5," she says.
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