Baby Development Week by Week
Baby development week by week process is probably one of the most exciting times of your pregnancy – this is the beginning, the most crucial stage when almost everything you do makes an impact on this new life inside you. Mean while, let’s take a look at what changes the baby goes through in this early period of its life. Your baby development week by week.
To chart a baby’s first few weeks of life development, we have to go back to school for a short biology lesson. As we’re aware, pregnancy begins when the egg and sperm meet and this happens in the fallopian tube. At this very early stage, what you have is not quite a foetus yet. It’s a zygote – a single cell when the egg and sperm meet.
Of course, this single-celled zygote divides many times over to form a blastocyst. This blastocyst then travels down the fallopian tube and into the uterus, when it reaches there, you and your baby will soon experience major changes.
Once the forth or fifth day of development rolls around, the blastocyst attaches to the lining of the uterus. This is called the implantation.
Part of the blastocyst grows to become the embryo, which is the baby in the first eight weeks of development. The other part of the blastocyst then becomes the placenta.
Now that your baby begins to take shape, he will grow within the amniotic sac in your uterus. Imagine him developing inside a balloon which is the amniotic sac. However, this balloon is filled with amniotic fluid instead of air. The amniotic fluid is clear and this balloon you’ve imagined is actually two layers of membrane – the chorion and amnion. So when you hear about “water bags breaking”, this refers to the rupture of the membranes.
These membranes line the inner walls of the uterus. Your baby will be floating about in this fluid and is attached to the placenta by the umbilical cord.
Next post, we’ll talk about placenta and baby development week by week.
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