Tiny ears of your baby move to final locations and settle to let your baby hear. Plenty of sounds may be heard when the baby stays inside! Your strong heart beating, blood in your veins, and your stomach problems are heard… The baby is already able to recognise outer sounds, e.g. your voice or music, though it cannot differentiate yet your voice from amongst others. Your baby weighs about 100 grams and measures about 11-12 cm.
As the baby still grows and your skin stretches you may experience a prickly sensation. Your abdomen may change its position and you can feel some pain in your back. But these are not all the changes which your body will be exposed to during pregnancy. Majority of these have not got any direct relation to growing abdomen. You may have some problems with bleeding gums as the amount of blood in your body has increased suddenly to deliver more nutrients to the foetus. Increase in blood volume along with gum oedema causes bleeding. To make things even worse, you may get stretch marks at the very moment. It is conditioned genetically whether you get those stretch marks or not. Even if you use increased amount of anti-stretch mark creams you may have these. Luckily, most of them will disappear when the baby is born. An increase in body mass is quite natural and you can expect to put on about 12-15 kg. Considering the weight of the baby, such increase may be petrifying. You have to keep in mind that bodily fluids, blood, and placenta constitute most of the increase. If you follow a healthy diet and not eat "for two" but "for two’s sake", you should be able to get to your shape from pre-pregnancy time. Just be patient! An another indication of your pregnancy is a darkened line running from your belly button to your pubic bone. This spot will probably fade shortly after delivery. Water is retained in your body in order to provide it to your developing baby. For this reason you may feel a bit swollen. Keep your legs up when you relax. Remember to drink plenty of liquids.
When your partner is carrying your baby inside you may feel helpless. A man cannot help her pregnant partner with frequent visits to the toilet, with sleeplessness, or nausea. Some men show hypersensitivity about all the changes that happen to their partner’s body as they are afraid that all those may have negative impact on the unborn child. Others prefer not to involve claiming that women are able to manage their pregnancies. Many others act as if they were against their partners joking about their appearance or the amount of food they eat. Such extreme emotions result basically from a sense of helplessness to their partner’s pregnancy. Some of them are overreacting, others ignore actions of mothers-to-be but the best solution at the moment is to support her as much as you can. Most of all, try to relieve her of all duties. Bring her snacks and water which all the time she should keep. Help her with domestic chores and find more time to relax. Give her foot or back massage to minimise pains. Touch her and cuddle as many times as possible. Remember that she needs strongly your constant presence. All you do at the moment is also done for your baby. Your ardent intimacy indicates increased involvement in the pregnancy.
Soon, the following labelling will appear on the packaging of many hygiene products, such as sanitary pads, pantyliners, tampons or wet wipes: