Week Eleven, or, Whoa! Somebody Step On A Duck?

Hee hee hee.

Week eleven must be just about the very best week of them all. First the good news.

All women show in different ways. You may not even be showing right now. And if you are showing? Don't worry, because those women who do seem to be keeping their figures will be showing soon enough.

The bad news: your jeans are getting tighter, and buttoning them can be more work than usual.

The good news: You're off the hook! You can lay it all at the feet of your favorite hormone, progesterone.

The side effect:

...some of the less than flattering by-products of all the good [progesterone] does are bloating… and burping… and passing gas.

Come on now. I'm about to be a dad. Give me a few last gasps at juvenile giggles here. It's all part of this system of slowing down the digestion so that baby can get as many nutrients as possible. That builds up the assorted bubbles and bloating that give you some discomfort and embarrassment. But really, look me in the eyes and tell me that you don't get a laugh out of this line:

...your baby is oblivious to all your intestinal distress, and may even be soothed by the gurgling of your gastric symphony.

Seriously. You have to admit that "gastric symphony" is a spectacular line, right up there with "all the world's a stage."

What does the kid look like anyway? What to Expect, perhaps humiliated by losing to American Baby for the last two weeks in the head to head food comparison, has no comparison this week. It's just straight up hard facts. Length: two inches. Weight: 1/3 of an ounce. Head: still mutantishly large.

Week Ten, Or, You're So Vein

We've noticed this already, but I guess week ten makes it official:

As your pregnancy progresses, you'll also notice that the veins in your hands and feet seem larger and more prominent, too. During pregnancy, the average woman's blood volume increases by 20 to 40 percent, and the veins have to keep up so they can go with the flow. So consider those blue lines on your body to be a pregnancy badge of honor: wear them with pride, and with the comforting knowledge that they'll disappear for good once your baby's born and you're no longer breastfeeding (if you choose to).

I did not know that about the blood volume. That's pretty impressive. Aside from all the miracle of life whoop de doo, the plain old mechanics of the whole thing is pretty incredible too. And that's not even the half of it. The baby is still getting bigger too. Fortunately, the kid's not an olive anymore. Unfortunately, the kid has become a prune. An inch and a half long prune:

Your baby is nearly an inch and a half long and the size of a prune, but not nearly as shriveled. In fact, your baby is really taking a human shape now. Bones and cartilage are forming, and small indentations on the legs are developing into knees and ankles. Though your baby's arms are taking shape and getting stronger, each one is only about the size of this number 1.

All right baby! We're number one, we're number one!

Week Nine, Or, Good-bye Embryo, Hello Fetus

Here's an update from one of our favorite sites, What To Expect When You're Expecting. That's right, the people who brought you the book have a website too.

We've passed the embryo stage now, and the future baby is officially a fetus! The kid is cute too. No longer a lizard/alien hybrid, it's now about the size of a medium green olive. I'm not sure that's an improvement. I mean, why does it have to be the yucky olive? What, at week fourteen, is it going to resemble a road apple or something?

I guess the baby must have stopped off at Will Smith's house at some point, because it turns out it's ears are "much more prominent." On the organ side of things, the gallbladder, liver, and spleen are all beginning to grow.

The arm and leg buds are doing some sort of jerky movements. The baby probably picked up on the hand jive from when we watched Grease: You're the One That I Want. Unlike Proud Daddy, Proud Mommy is not quite old enough to remember the movie.

Here's an artist conception (snicker!) of what the baby might look like:



Page the OB-GYN, stat! My baby's growing inside a kidney!

No, no. It's just the uterus. I kid.

Hey moms: if you're feeling tired, it's just pregnancy fatigue. Be strong, and remember, you'll have plenty of time to rest once the baby is born. You've only got thirty-one weeks to go!