You are now 14 weeks pregnant, and it is time! You can find out if you are having a boy or a girl this
week! This week’s big developments: Your baby can now squint, frown, and grimace. Thanks to brain impulses,
the facial muscles are getting a workout as the tiny features form one expression after another. Your baby is
stretching out. From head to bottom, they measure 3 1/2 inches. The body is growing faster than the head,
which now sits upon a more distinct neck. By the end of this week, arms will have grown to a length that is in
proportion to the rest of the body. (The legs still have some lengthening to do.) Your baby is starting to develop
an ultra-fine, downy covering of hair, called lanugo, all over the body. Your baby’s liver starts making bile this
week — a sign that it is doing its job right. Though you may not feel the tiny punches and kicks yet, the hands
and feet (which now measure about 1/2 inch long) are more flexible and active because of more muscle
development. Every ultrasound facility is different when it comes to showing you your baby. At My facility, I
talk. A lot. The whole point of the session is to show you your baby and I will be your tour guide. At the gender
session, I like to have fun. The first thing I want everyone to know is that you will find out your baby’s gender in
the 2D black and white. Your baby is still too small to accurately see the gender parts in the 3D, 4D or HD
imaging. You and I want the most accurate way to show the gender, and, at this stage, it is the black and white.
After putting warm gel on your belly, I will get a picture on the screen of the back of the baby’s legs . I then
point an arrow between the legs and let you guess what the baby is. With today’s technology, it should be very
evident whether it is a boy or girl. If it is a boy, there will be a boy part sticking out between the legs and I like
to tell mom and dad that it looks like a turtle. The penis will be the turtle head and the testicle area will be the
turtle shell. If it is a girl, the main thing is that there will be nothing protruding between the legs . On a girl, if
you get the right angle, there may be two white lines like an equal sign in math. This is the actual girl parts.
After you guess, I will confirm boy or girl and then go on to show other things about your baby. At this
developmental stage, if you choose to see your baby in the color, I remind my clients that the baby will be very
skinny and can be startling in how they look. All babies tend to look the same and be the same size and weight.
I would advise looking on Google for pictures of 14-week babies in 3D before having a session to get acclimated
to what you may see. Your baby weighs 4 ounces now and is about the size of a baseball. Your baby’s head is
about 1/3 the size of the entire body and is about the size of a ping pong ball. The arms and legs are the size of
match sticks. I once measured the width of a baby’s nose, and it measured 3 millimeters. On the color images,
you will see little triangular flaps of skin where the ears are developing, and you may see a large dark spot on
the top of the head. This is not hair, that will develop later. The dark spot is the large soft spot under the skin.
The machine assigns it a darker color because it is less dense. That soft spot will continue to get smaller over
the course of the pregnancy. Most of my clients do not realize that you can start moving your baby around in
the womb at this stage, just by turning on one side or the other. Remember, your baby is floating in the womb
like a little astronaut. They are starting to react to gravity. When you turn on your side, you may see them react
by sticking their arms out to stop their body from rolling with gravity. This reflex gets more refined as your baby
develops.
