Pregnancy Archives - Page 2 of 12

When Can You Tell the Gender of a Baby? External Gender Development

While your baby’s gender is determined from conception by the presence of an X or Y chromosome in the winning sperm, gender changes don’t begin physically until around the 9th week of pregnancy. Gender development doesn’t begin at all until 6 weeks. This leaves many parents-to-be wondering, well, when can you tell the gender of a baby via ultrasound? What does a boy or girl look like on an ultrasound? To answer that, it’s easiest to look at the gender development process.

We all start the same

Between 9 and 11 weeks via ultrasound, both genders have a “nub” and “bulge” visually like most would envision on a male baby. These structures are composed of three primary parts, the genital tuber, labioscrotal folds, and urogenital folds.

When Can You Tell the Gender of a Baby? External Gender Development — Female fetus at 11 weeks

Below is an illustration of how these structures change from 6 weeks (complete with tail) to 8 weeks just before gender differentiation begins. The visual at this point is the same for a male or female child.

Boy baby gender development

With a male baby, between weeks 9 and 11 weeks, the genital tuber becomes the glans of the penis, the urogenital folds become the shaft, the labioscrotal folds become the scrotum, and the anus is the anus still. You can see a visual of this below. Your baby’s testicles remain in the abdomen until roughly between week 28 and 32. The foreskin is formed in week 12. By week 13 to 16, a very clear difference can be seen on ultrasound, but keep in mind, at 12 to 13 weeks, the average baby is only the length of 2 pennies placed side by side, and the genital area is the size of a pinhead. A much better visual can be obtained at 20 weeks when gender changes are more definitely complete.

Girl baby gender development

Female reproductive parts begin from the same embryonic bodies as male reproductive parts. The urogenital folds become the Labia minora (the inner smaller lips of the vulva), the labioscrotal folds become the Labio majora (large lips of the vulva), and the genital tuber becomes the clitoris. Ovaries are fully formed by week 12 and contain upwards of six million eggs. This number decreases to around 1 million by the time your baby is to born and reduces even further to about 400 by puberty.

Identifying gender on ultrasounds

Boy:

A boy ultrasound is most typically described as looking like a turtle or snail, but as the beginning of this page suggests, accurate dating is very important as both genders have this shape early on. A clear boy ultrasound at 16 weeks is shown below.

Girl:

A girl ultrasound should have three distinct lines (the outline of a vulva). The absence of a protrusion (the turtle head on a boy ultrasound) doesn’t necessarily mean a baby is female. It could just be a bad angle. Note the lines may not be the same length. The image below is considered a very clear girl ultrasound picture at 17 weeks.

Wondering if ultrasounds can be wrong? Read on. You may also enjoy our baby gender determination quiz based on the science of gender swaying.

Pregnancy After Miscarriage

If you’ve previously had a miscarriage and conceived again, its pretty normal to worry you may lose another. Miscarriage ruins the innocence of pregnancy. Prior to my losses, I’d had three healthy pregnancies. It honestly never occurred to me a pregnancy could end in anything but a baby in 9 or so months. After two back-to-back losses, I spent pretty much my entire pregnancy after miscarriage worrying. In fact, even now that my rainbow baby has been born, I still worry I’ll lose her somehow–something that never really crossed my mind with my first three.

As far as my pregnancy, those first 12 weeks where the risk of miscarriage is highest were torture. For me, it helped to see those weeks as stages with small victories.

Miscarriage statistics by week are as follows:

Note, these are general statistics based on fetal age and may vary by your age and health.

Week 1: At this point, you wouldn’t even know you were pregnant. Your chance of miscarriage is 75 percent.

Week 2: You may get a positive test, and then have your period. This is commonly called a “chemical pregnancy” as the egg never really sets up shop in the uterus. Your chance of miscarriage is 30 percent.

Week 3 to 6: By now, the egg has implanted, and you’ll have missed your period. Your miscarriage chance is now down to 10 percent.

Week 7 to 12: Your risk remains at 10 percent until you have heard or seen a heartbeat. The heart begins to beat sometime between week 6 and 7 in most cases. After a heartbeat is detected, your chance of a miscarriage is only 5 percent.

Week 12 to 20: Second trimester losses are far less common. Your chance of miscarriage is only 3 percent.

Week 20+: After 20 weeks a loss is technically deemed a still birth. Still births come with a risk of about 1 percent.

As you can see, after you’ve seen a heartbeat, the major risk of miscarriage has passed. By week 12, you can usually relax unless you’ve had complications which place your pregnancy at high risk.

Week 23: Preterm viability begins at 23 weeks, though few babies survive at this age.

Week 28: Survival rates rise to 80%, though many babies born between 24 and 28 weeks have lasting effects.

Week 32: This is the magic number. Babies born at or around 32 weeks and onward generally have no lasting effects from preterm labor and the survival rate is nearly 100%.

How can I ease the worry during my pregnancy after miscarriage?

-Continue basal body temping: I must caution do NOT stress any day where a temp is lower or even below the cover line. The goal of basal body temping during a pregnancy after a miscarriage is to watch for a trend of low temperatures. For example, if you’ve had three temperatures under the cover line and spotting, there may be reason to worry. Basal body temperature will tell you if your progesterone levels are elevated, which is essential to a healthy pregnancy in the first trimester, seeing those high temps can be particularly reassuring.

-Put down the pee sticks. Please. HPT darkness can be affected by all sorts of things. Testing every day and worrying over a slightly lighter line will do you no good.

-Purchase a Doppler after week 8. I specify after week 8, but week 9 may even be a better bet. Home dopplers will not pick up a heartbeat at 6 weeks, even if it’s there. It’s exceptionally uncommon for a home Doppler to find a heartbeat at 7 weeks. Thin women may have luck in week 8 or 9, and curvier women may have to wait until week 10 or 13 even. I support the purchase of a Doppler, because it allows you to actively check on your baby. It really only helps with about 2 weeks of worrying at best, but can also be reassuring in the second trimester. Keep in mind that you should not use a Doppler more than once a week. While home Dopplers are “safe,” there is insufficient research on prolonged and excessive use to determine if using one every day, for example, may be unsafe. You can purchase a doppler online for around $50. I even used mine on days later in my pregnancy when my wee one wasn’t very active, and I got worried.

Unfortunately, no matter what you do chances are you’re gonna worry. Try your best to relax and keep in mind that you didn’t do anything to cause your last loss, and if its going to happen no amount of worrying will change that.

9 Weeks Pregnant: Moody Name Changes

At 9 weeks pregnant, your baby is officially now a fetus rather than an embryo, but we prefer the word baby at any developmental stage. By the end of this week, all the major internal bits are also in place, but they do still have some finishing up to do. You, however, may feel a bit out of place. Mood swings are the most common pregnancy complaint this week.

What’s going on with your baby at 9 weeks pregnant?

Besides the technical name change, your baby has also changed out the last bit of that embryonic tail for a more recognizably human face with distinct ears, nostrils, lips and even eye lids, though his/her eyes will remain fused shut for another roughly 18 weeks. His/her hands are less webbed and head is more proportionate to his/her body. The heart also now has four chambers, and can officially be heard on ultrasound rather than just seen.

It is, unfortunately, unlikely a hand-held Doppler will pick up your baby’s heart beat at 9 weeks, though not unheard of towards the end of the week with very sensitive models in thinner women. Regardless, it’s far more common for a Doppler to pick up a heartbeat around 12 weeks. Your baby is about the size of a grape or green olive measuring around .9 inches and weighing about .07 ounces.

What’s going on with your body at 9 weeks pregnant?

By 9 weeks pregnant, you can take whatever you typically experience while PMSing and just multiple that by well, about 9. Coincidentally, women who generally do not experience severe PMS also seem to experience milder pregnancy symptoms. One possible explanation for this is that both PMS and pregnancy symptoms are caused by hormonal changes. Some women may just react less severely to hormonal fluctuations.

9 weeks pregnant ultrasound — 2D ultrasound at 9 weeks pregnant

As mentioned, one of the most common pregnancy symptoms at 9 weeks pregnant is mood swings. In addition to hormonal havoc, around 9 weeks seems to be that point where it really sinks in—I’m pregnant. This can add a whole new emotional component to already volatile moods. Of course, feeling like crap overall isn’t a huge help for most women either. On the upside, as the placenta finishes up this week, sometime in the next few weeks it will take over hormone production, and you should see an alleviation in symptoms across the board. In the meantime, it may help to take some “me time.” Not only does private relaxation give you time to work through your feelings, it also spares you the stress of accidental overreactions, random public sob fests, and other joys of severe mood swings. We’re certainly not saying you should lock yourself away from the world as a “public service,” simply to remember to make time for yourself.