Fetus at 10- 22 weeks

Fetus at 10– 14 weeks: Just 12 weeks after conception, the fetus is fully formed. Your baby has all of their organs, muscles, limbs and bones, and their reproductive organs are developed. From now on your baby will grow and mature. Your baby is already moving about, but you will not be able to feel movements yet. By about 14 weeks, your baby’s heartbeat is strong and can be heard by an ultrasound scanner.

The heartbeat is very fast – about twice as fast as a normal adult’s heartbeat. At 14 weeks, the baby is about 85mm long from head to bottom. Your pregnancy may start to show, but this varies a lot from woman to woman.

Fetus at 15– 22 weeks

Your baby is growing faster than at any other time in their life. Their body grows bigger so that their head and body are more in proportion, and they don’t look so ‘top heavy’. The face becomes much more defined and the hair, eyebrows and eyelashes are beginning to grow. Their eyelids stay closed over their eyes. Your baby already has their own individual fingerprints, as the lines on the skin of their fingers are now formed. Their fingernails and toenails are growing and their hands can grip.

At about 22 weeks, your baby becomes covered in a very fine, soft hair called lanugo.  We don’t know what this hair is for, but it is thought that it may keep the baby at the right temperature. The lanugo disappears before birth or soon after.

Between 16 and 22 weeks, you will usually feel your baby move for the first time. If this is your second baby, you may feel it earlier – at about 16–18 weeks. At first, you feel a fluttering or bubbling, or a very slight shifting movement. This can feel a bit like indigestion. Later, you will be able to tell that it is the baby’s movements and you may even see the baby kicking about. Sometimes you will see a bump that is clearly a hand or a foot. At 22 weeks the fetus actual size from head to bottom is about 27cm.