About You

Week 13 is the thirteenth and final week of the 1st trimester , which means a third of the pregnancy has finished. In this week, arrange an appointment with your gynaecologist or obstetrician for an ultrasound scan that will be conducted so as to check the growth of your baby. This scan is conducted to make sure that your baby is healthy and growing properly. For many women, the side effects of early pregnancy such as frequent urination, intense fatigue and nausea will be diminishing. Your uterus, while large enough to announce to onlookers that you're indeed pregnant, isn't so huge that it gets in your way. Even though birth is months away, your breasts may already start making colostrum, the fluid that will feed your baby for the first few days before your milk comes in

Now that morning sickness is diminishing, you may start to experience heartburn , as the uterus starts pushing up against the stomach. Eating smaller, more frequent meals can help.

About Baby

In this week, baby may weigh around 23 grams and measures 7-8 cm in length (from crown to rump) – about as long as a pea pod and weighing half a banana. Unique fingerprints have formed, twenty teeth buds are now developed completely, and inside the intestines small hair-like growth called villi appear that will help supply food in coming weeks. The intestines also shift from umbilical cord into the abdomen, while the pancreas starts producing the insulin.

Baby can respond to touch and will feel and respond to gentle poking of your stomach. If you're having a girl, she now has approximately 2 million eggs in her ovaries, will have only a million by the time she's born, and have fewer eggs as she gets older, with by age 17 having around 200,000.

This week's activities for the pregnancy to-do list

✔Eat smaller meals more frequently to stave off heartburn

✔Start sleeping on your side as your growing stomach will make it impossible to sleep on it, and sleeping on your back will put pressure on your spine.

✔Research paediatricians

✔Consider borrowing previously worn maternity clothing from friends or family

✔Share your view of parenting with your partner - a strange thing to think about, but it can be the cause of many arguments after children are born. To get the conversation going, try this creative writing exercise: Each of you makes two lists, one titled "My mother always..." and one titled "My mother never..." Then do the same for "My father always/my father never." When you're done, talk about what you wrote down and decide together which behaviours you value and which you'd like to change as you raise your child

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