Fetal Development Week 16

Though you can’t see them yet, your little one is busy practicing facial expressions this week! Your fetus owes this new ability to smile, frown, and squint to facial muscles that have recently developed. And that expressive face is housed in a head that can be held fairly erect by week 16. Meanwhile, your baby’s heart is busy pumping, moving about 25 quarts of blood each and every day. Your baby is now about 4 ½ inches long, and weighs 3 ½ ounces.  In other words, about the size of an avocado! This development means that your fetus’s legs are now almost proportionate to that growing body. In fact, all this growing may mean you’ll soon be able to feel a quickening; the faint first movements of your baby! But if your abdomen remains movement-free, don’t worry—some women don’t feel their baby’s first fluttery kicks until week 20. Want to know more? Check back right here for your next video update.