Pregnancy Chronicles - Week 13

This week has been a big one for Anna and her partner, and as you’ll probably notice we’ve skipped ahead a little bit. I’ll explain more on this in a second.

But let’s start with week 13 and what is going on with baby and Anna pregnancy wise.

Week 13 - What’s going on?

During week 13 baby is now about the size of a plum, so getting pretty big now already. Their little teeny tiny skeleton is now forming and baby can now swallow amniotic fluid, which they do a lot of for the remainder of pregnancy. This has a few functions, firstly it is good practice for baby as it uses the muscles they need for swallowing once they are born but it also helps with growth and development of the digestive and respiratory systems. Not only that but it also helps to keep a healthy balance to the amniotic fluid that is helping protect baby as baby swallows, and wees the amniotic fluid back out. Gross and cool in equal measure.

At this stage your baby will have also fully developed ovaries or testes and their genitals are starting to form outside of their body too!

For mums at this stage sometimes you might notice your bump starting to appear, it can also be a time when you start to notice a dark line appearing below the belly button and some mums report an increase in their sex drive at this stage too, due to hormonal changes and increased blood flow to the pelvis area.

Usually around this time all those early pregnancy symptoms are starting to fade away, if not go all together but for some people they can stick around for longer.

But let’s see what Anna’s been feeling like this week!

Anna’s Update

I’m still craving salt and vinegar McCoy’s and full fat coke and still feeling a little bit nauseous and tired but this does seem to be easing off a bit.

This week we went for our first ultrasound scan. It was so nice getting to see baby and their little heartbeat and knowing that everything was ok. They did however move my due date forward by 5 days. So this would have been week 12 but by their estimate I’m week 13.

The worst bit of this week was the blood test that I had at the ultrasound appointment and having to hold a wee in for an hour and a half!

In a nutshell, this week has been very exciting!”

What you need to know!

So, let’s talk about due dates a little here shall we?

Moving due dates at the first ultrasound scan is really normal. Your due date that is given to you at your first midwife appointment is usually based on the first day of your last period, whereas an ultrasound goes on measurements of your baby.

Both these methods though are far from foolproof, for example, basing your due date on your last period is based on the assumption that all women have a 28 day cycle. The same thing can be said for ultrasounds, they are assuming that all babies measure the same week by week, with no account taken for size of parents or input from parents as to when they think they conceived.

If you have been actively trying to get pregnant, it’s likely that you know your due date better than anyone else.

Most importantly though, let’s remember that the term used is actually estimated due date, meaning that ultimately, it’s a guess and unless you conceived by IVF, nobody really knows exactly when you conceived.

Even if you do know, it also doesn’t mean that you will magically give birth at exactly 40 weeks, because as all living things on the planet, we vary a lot between each individual, as do our babies!

My advice to you in regards to due dates is to try not to focus on a due day, instead focus on a due window. The World Health Organisation says that an average pregnancy last between 37 and 42 weeks, so thinking about it as a due window is a lot more helpful and can help you enjoy the last weeks of pregnancy much more.

In real life though, does it really matter if they move your due date forwards?

Well yes, actually, it kind of does.

At around 41 weeks of pregnancy it is very common to start getting a lot of pressure from healthcare professionals to have your labour induced if you haven’t had your baby. This means that for Anna, this pressure is likely to come 5 days earlier than it would if we were basing it on her first due date.

When I spoke to Anna she is pretty sure she can pinpoint the day she got pregnant, and she’s sure that she is actually still in week 12 rather than week 13 which means she is going to get nearly a whole week less than she would have before the switch.

If induction is something you are wanting to avoid, your due date, and the moving around of it can have a big impact later on in pregnancy. Induction is something you should definitely do your research on before you make a decision, there is so much more to it than just getting baby here.

I’ll dig into this in more detail in a blog post for you soon, but if you want to reach out and chat, you can always drop me an email and this is something we delve deep into on my courses too.

So that’s it for this week! We have decided to move it along to week 13 to keep in line with what Anna’s maternity notes are saying and so you can see later on down the line how this has played out for her.

See you next week!