Up to 26 weeks
Your baby is growing taller and stronger; and her movements are becoming more complex. She’s also showing signs of sensitivity, awareness, and intelligence. A baby born after 24 weeks of pregnancy could survive with specialized intensive care in a neonatal unit.
Your Baby’s Progress
She’s still red and skinny, but she’ll soon start to put on weight. Her skin may look very wrinkled, but this is because she doesn’t yet have much fat to plump it out. Her body is growing faster than her head, and by the end of this month her proportions are about the same as those of a newborn. Her arms and legs have their normal amount of muscle, her legs and body are, in proportion, and her bone are beginning to harden in the center. Lines start to appear on the palms of her hands. The brain cells she’ll use for conscious thought now start to mature, and she begins to be able to remember and learn. (In one experiment, babies in the womb were trained to kick in reponse to a particular vibration.)
The genitals of a boy and girl look completely different by this time; if your baby is a boy, testosterone-producing cells in the testes increase in number.
Her hearing Your baby can hear sound frequencies that you can’t hear. She’ll move more in response to high frequencies than to low ones and she’ll move her body in rhythm with your speech. From this month she will begin to respond to drum beats by jumping up and down. Some mothers say they’ve had to leave concerts because their unborn babies wouldn’t keep still.
If she hears a piece of music often, she may realize it’s familiar to her when she grows up - even if she can’t remember ever dat hearing it. Some musicians have said that they “knew” unseen pieces of music, and later found out that their mothers played the these to them while they were in the womb.
She’ll also learn to recognize her father’s voice from this month onward. A baby whose father talks to her while she’s in the womb can pick out her father’s voice in a roomful of people immediately after she is born. She’ll respond to it emotionally. For example, if she’s upset, she’ll stop crying when she hears her father talking and calm down.
Her breathing Inside her lungs, more and more air sacs are forming. They’ll continue to increase in number until she’s about eight years old. Around them, the blood vessels that will help her to absorb oxygen and expel carbon dioxide are multiplying. Her pair nostrils have opened, too, and she’s beginning to make breathing movements with her muscles, so that her system has plenty of breathing practice before she’s born.
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