Congratulations! You’re already halfway in your pregnancy! As you progress on your pregnancy week by week, your baby also develops rapidly inside your womb and your baby is getting bigger, as well as your tummy! Let’s find out about the progress with your baby and the changes with your body.

Mother:

• At this time, your uterus and belly button are at the same position, and you’ve probably gained around 10 pounds, which will increase week by week.
• Remember that it is a great thing to work out while you’re pregnant, just don’t overdue it!  For tips on working out while pregnant, check them out here!
• Iron is essential around this time since this is important to keep up with the expanding blood volume and also for your baby and the placenta. Red meat and poultry with dark meat are essential sources for iron. Other non-meat sources such as legumes, soy-based products, spinach, prune juice, and raisins are also common sources of iron.
• You also start feeling clumsier due to your bulging belly.
• At this point, you have probably heard a lot of different things, like the higher the baby means a girl, the lower the baby means a boy.  Also, silly things like if you have heartburn it means they have a lot of hair.  Find out the answers to all those pregnancy tales here!

Baby:

• Your baby may now probably weighs about 10 ½ ounces and measures around 6 ½ inches long, head to bottom, and 10 inches from head to heel.
• Your baby may now be practicing his breathing and swallowing, which will continue as weeks go by.
• He may also be producing a black, sticky by-product of digestion called meconium.
• He continues to grow and put on added weight to help the head become proportional to the rest of the body.
• Layers of skin are now created that will form his hands and feet later in life.

As you know already, smoking and consuming alcohol are very dangerous to your baby’s health and your health.  So, if you’re currently smoking, consider doing anything to quit.  Here are the dangers of smoking during pregnancy.

To sum it all up, from the past 20 weeks, your baby has now grown from a single united cell to a fully-formed baby. But you still have to wait for another 20 weeks until your baby is born. There’s still more room for development and growth.  Make sure to monitor your baby and never compromise your health!