Week 14
About the size ofan apple
Always on the move! Your baby is now 8.5 cm and 60 grams.
There is a lot going on in there. Your belly is a hive of activity, even though you cannot feel it yet! Your baby kicks its legs and waves its hands, while swimming around happily in the amniotic fluid: after all, there is still plenty of room. Now and then an elbow or a foot pokes against the wall of the womb. Only in a few weeks will you feel something of those gentle movements. All this movement is very good for training the muscles, by the way. Your baby is now also getting some fine downy hair (lanugo). It covers the whole body: the forehead, the belly, the legs, the hands… This downy hair stays until about the thirty-seventh week. It keeps the protective skin grease (vernix), produced by the sebaceous glands, in place. Vernix protects your baby’s skin against the softening effect of the amniotic fluid and against infections. By the time your baby is born, all this downy hair has gone again. Only when a baby is born early can there still be fine hairs on the shoulders, back and face.