By this point, your uterus - otherwise known as the basketball you are carrying around in your abdomen - may rest as much as two inches above your belly button. You may have noticed recently how people (sometimes complete strangers) have acquired a fondness for touching your belly. You've also likely noticed how people (again complete strangers) have a tendency to comment on your size (too big, too little, carrying too low, carrying too high). Everyone and their mother (and your mother and her mother, and his mother) will have an opinion.
For some intolerable and bewildering reason, a visibly pregnant belly is often treated as public property and a silent invitation for touching and commenting upon. It is one of the wonders of pregnancy – one you certainly do not need to put up with. We recommend saying something along the lines of What the hell are you doing?. or It's mine, not yours. Hands off. Or perhaps something a little less crazy-pregnant-lady-like, such as Please ask before touching my body.
From here on in, the baby's central nervous system will continue to develop, as do their lungs. The lungs are starting to form tiny branches and will eventually produce a substance called surfactant, necessary for respiration after birth. By the end of this week, your wee one will be weighing in at a whopping two pounds and will be about fourteen inches long. This increase in weight means that tiny being is actually starting to fill out their very wrinkly skin. But they aren't anywhere close to the adorable chubby baby they will be in a month or so. Most of that filling out comes in the last, long awaited, slightly dreaded third trimester, which you are just about in. Woot!
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