The Second Trimester

The Second Trimester What’s happening inside the womb now: Your baby is more active, though you can’t quite feel it moving yet. He may start to put his thumb in his mouth now, and his skull is starting to get more solid. Ribs are starting to form but aren’t quite visible yet.

Early in the second trimester, hormones are having their effect! The prostate gland or ovaries are developing. The roof of your baby’s mouth is nearly complete. Around the third week of this trimester, your baby now has a layer of transparent skin, and is starting to form eyebrows and hair on his head.Eyes and ears have more definition and bone and marrow are now forming.

One month into the 2nd trimester, your child is four and five inches in length and weighs nearly 3 ounces. Your baby's eyes are becoming sensitive to light. Her eyes are becoming sensitive to light and she can squint, frown and display other expressions. She can also make a fist.

That all important fat layer that keeps us warm and protects and energizes our body is forming now.

Your child can swallow! The nerves in his brain are now connected to the ears which have reached their final position on the skull. Your son can hear your heart beat, and the rumble of hunger in your stomach. He may react to loud noises outside his environment but jumping or moving.

By the 18th week of your pregnancy, you may already have felt the first signs of life in your womb. If not, you WILL soon. Your baby’s hearing has improved. He can faintly hear your voice and the voices of others as you converse. He can move his muscles reflexively and his kidneys are producing urine which is stored in your amniotic sac after it is excreted. He has a new coating (vernix) and very fine hair (lanugo) to protect his thin skin.

About 6 inches long now, weighing about 9 ounces your baby is most likely moving around by now and you can feel it! Her skin is thicker and less transparent and she has eyebrows and some hair on her head. During this trimester, bone marrow begins to produce blood cells and your child starts to ingest sugar from your amniotic fluid.
Your baby is about one pound around 21 weeks into your pregnancy. She has developed a sense of touch and now has taste buds. Genitalia is complete.

Your child will practice breathing by moving your amniotic fluid in and out of his lungs. His skin is much less transparent and he is developing more fat.

Your son has fingerprints! His inner ear has developed to the point where he can sense whether he is upside down in the womb. By now, he will have developed a schedule or cycle for sleep and wakefulness

Fingers and hands are fully developed though your baby’s ability to control these tools is far from refined. You will notice more movement as your child explores his limited universe within the womb.

Maybe close to 2 pounds by your 25th week, your baby is growing faster with clearly defined eyebrows, eyelashes and eyes. At the end of this trimester, you are 2/3 of the way to delivery and the changes you and your baby experience during the final trimester will be even more dramatic. Right now your baby’s organs and immune system are working hard to reach completion in time for delivery, and he has grown to 3-4 times in length since the end of the first trimester.

During your second trimester you may still be experiencing morning sickness and you may have started to have headaches and a sensitivity and aversion to certain smells and foods.

If you have waited to tell your family, co-workers and friends about your pregnancy, you can probably do so now. Most women are skittish about announcing a pregnancy before the second trimester begins because miscarriage most often occurs during the first trimester.

If your appearance or your symptoms changed early in your pregnancy, you may already have been faced with this announcement.

If you work in a risky job or a strenuous or dangerous position, you have probably already told your employer you are pregnancy and decided on what you will do to protect your child and yourself during your pregnancy. If you have NOT done this, you need to do it ASAP. During this trimester you will want to start thinking about and talking to your doctor about delivery-related issues.

Give yourself plenty of time to talk about these things and decide so you are not caught short when you are trying to prepare your home and family for the impending delivery during your first trimester.

Where will you have the baby, who will you choose as your pediatrician? Will you take childbirth classes and have a natural delivery or do you want to opt for pain medication during birth.

If you are going to take a childbirth course, ask your doctor for recommendations and remember that you will usually need a partner.

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