Your baby

Your baby has grown to around 14cm from crown to rump, or nearly 18cm from head to toe. Having gained another two ounces in just one week, your baby may weigh as much as seven ounces.

Your baby's bones are forming rapidly now and, although they are still malleable, they are beginning to harden or ‘ossify’. His limbs are lengthening too, the arms and legs can be flexed, and at last your baby’s body is more in proportion to the head.

Even at this young age, your unborn baby can pull complex facial expressions such as yawning and frowning. Your baby will also be able to move his hands quite intricately - clasping his hands together, touching the cord and sucking his fingers and thumb.

Your progress

By now, your heart is working 40 to 50% harder than normal. Assuming that you’ve been eating a healthy diet (i.e. not too many tubs of ice cream) you have probably gained about 10 to 12 pounds and you can probably feel your uterus just under your navel. A dark line from your navel to your pubic bone, called the linea nigra, may appear now, although it will fade gradually after you give birth.

Even if you haven’t yet felt your baby ‘quicken’, you’ll probably notice the first little fluttering foetal movements at some point over the next month. You may have been waiting anxiously for this moment to come and for most women it’s a reassuring and magical feeling to know that your baby is moving freely inside you.

What to think about

Your pelvic floor muscles are shaped like a hammock and go from your pubic bone to your tailbone. These are the muscles you use when you want to stop the flow of urine. However, the strain of pregnancy and childbirth can weaken this muscle, causing stress incontinence (leaking a few drops when you cough, laugh or strain to lift something).

Pelvic floor muscles are also important to keep your baby's head in the best possible position during labour and delivery - they can even help ease and shorten labour and delivery! That’s why it’s so worthwhile doing your pelvic floor exercises, especially during and after pregnancy.

But first you need to identify your pelvic floor muscles. The next time you take a bathroom break (which, if you're pregnant, will probably be within the next ten minutes), stop your urine flow. The muscles that you're tightening are your pelvic floor muscles.

To strengthen these muscles, practice squeezing and releasing them 10 times. You’ll soon realise you can exercise anywhere, at any time and no one will know - during boring phone calls, at traffic lights or waiting in queues.

Having mastered the basic squeeze, try doing repetitions of short squeezes 10 to 25 a few times a day, working your way up to 100 squeezes a day. Then try long squeezes, gradually squeezing the muscle from the bottom of your pelvic floor slowly to the top, then releasing slowly back down again. As you get more practice, you can work towards holding for longer and practising more repetitions.