This Week In Utero: Sweet 16

SNIFF!  They grow up so fast:

Your baby is already mugging for the camera as she practices all sorts of facial expressions, such as squinting, yawning and grimacing, which will come in handy when you introduce her to pureed spinach. Check out what else is happening in utero:

You're just getting comfortable with being a new mom, but you're actually on the road to being a grandma. If your baby is a girl, her uterus is fully developed and the ovaries already hold primitive egg cells. Did that just make you feel a thousand years old, or what?

Your baby's skin is still translucent and wrinkly, not unlike an old man's, but more fat will soon accumulate under the dermas to plump her out. If you could peer inside right now, you'd be able to see all of her veins under her skin. And speaking of veins, your baby's heart now pumps about 25 quarts of blood per day, and she hasn't even seen Orlando Bloom yet! Also, her eyes are now locked and loaded at their final destination, facing forward rather than to the sides. (Whew!)

This is the week women get an amniocentesis, if their doc recommends it. In addition to supplying doctors with a boatload of info about the baby's health, amnios are also more than 99 percent accurate in determining what version of baby you'll be having. So if you want to know and you're getting an amnio, now's a great time to find out for sure.

Your baby weighs about 3 ounces this week and measures between 4 and 5 inches, about the length of your mascara.

And this week we scheduled our "official" ultrasound for the morning of June 3 (the one above I grabbed from the Internet shows week 16, next month of course we'll be in week 20).  That'll be a big day: hopefully we'll learn which names we'll be calling the sniglet, then I'll be taking the printout onto a plane as I head to Israel/Gaza that evening.

ntodd