What’s Happening With Mom?
Well, there was a unicorn, the teacher I had a sixth grade crush on, and marshmallows. A lot of marshmallows. Pregnant women often have wild, vivid or intense dreams, perhaps about your baby, perhaps about something random. If you haven’t started already, why not start a pregnancy journal? As well as your other pregnancy thoughts, it’s fun to record your dreams about your baby, and in a few months you’ll be able to compare the baby you saw in your dreams with your newborn.
Weight gain in the first trimester averages just 2 pounds. Why so little? At the end of the first trimester, your baby is barely three inches long and weighs less than an ounce. The majority of the weight you have gained is extra fluid, your growing uterus, and extra blood flow. So you don’t need to gain any more than that…yet. You may have even lost weight from morning sickness.
The roller coaster of weight loss and gain together with all the other physical changes of pregnancy can shake a mom’s confidence and affect her body image.
Some women revel in their changing shape and new curves, and some women feel fat and unattractive. Truth be told, most of us are in the second category. If further truth be told, we should all be in the first category. But we know better than to tell hormonal, touchy pregnant women that they do look great (sssh… but you do) so we’ll leave it by saying that whatever pregnancy does to your body, your baby is worth it.
What’s Happening With Baby?
At week 11, your baby is officially called a fetus. The reproductive organs are developing this week, which brings us up to a complete set of major organs and structures. So now, once everything baby needs is in place, your baby can start to get bigger.
This week, your baby is two inches long. Your placenta will start to grow rapidly too, to provide nutrients to your growing baby, who is curled up in the classic fetal position.
Tags: dreams, fetus, First Trimester, hormones, increased blood flow, morning sickness, pregnancy journal, reproductive organs, weight gain
