Week 14: Under Pressure

Welcome to month four! You’ve entered your second trimester and have, hopefully, felt some relief from your nausea and fatigue. As your baby bump grows, you may experience round ligament pain. Your uterus is tethered by various ligaments within your abdomen to support it. When your uterus grows in pregnancy, these ligaments are stretched and may trigger sharp pain or tenderness to the sides of your abdomen. Avoid sudden positional changes, and use good body mechanics to avoid overstretching the ligaments. Avoiding sudden position changes is also the best way to prevent faintness or dizziness in pregnancy. Your body’s blood vessels and heart are under added stress during pregnancy. The blood volume in your body increases by over a litre, meaning your heart has to work harder and pump faster to keep all that blood moving throughout your body. Sudden position changes, for example, standing up quickly from sitting or sitting up quickly from standing, make it difficult for your heart to adjust the blood flow to the areas that need it fast. Sitting or standing up slowly will give your heart and vessels more time to adapt. This not only promotes normal blood flow to your body but also to your baby’s.

Your baby is 14 weeks old and is continuing to develop rapidly. The brain is now almost fully formed and is sending more intricate messages. Although it is almost fully formed in structure, the brain will continue to build more connective pathways, learn more skills, and grow even after birth. Your baby could already send basic signals at eight weeks gestation but now can trigger uncoordinated limb movements and is starting to work on reflexive movements like sucking and swallowing. Your baby’s digestive system is now in its correct place. It will slowly work on forming stool in the large bowel called meconium. This meconium is the first stool your baby will pass near birth and is a thick tar-like substance. For now, it just slowly accumulates as your baby swallows amniotic fluid and acts as a plug at the end of the digestive tract.