Baby update

I had my one-month check up earlier this afternoon. Everything is looking great except the results of my glucose tolerance test. I've got to start up my readings four times a day again and head back in two weeks to see what she has to say about them. I expected this, so I'm not surprised.

Here's where the baby is headed this month:

According to AmericanBaby,

In the first half of the third month, all your baby's internal parts are present, even if they are minute and immature. Some of the intestines form outside your baby's body, within the umbilical cord, because its abdomen is too small to hold them all. The kidneys are starting to produce urine, which your baby excretes into the surrounding amniotic fluid. Bones and muscles are starting to grow to support tiny organs. The ribs and backbone are soft and pliable.

Swellings on the side of the neck show where your baby's ears will be, and the insides of the ears are forming. On the head are the start of lips on a mouth that can already open and close, and a bit of a nose. Eyelids, which will fuse together and stay closed for a few months, are growing over developing eyes.

The reproductive organs are among the last to form. In the middle of the month, testes have formed in boys and ovaries in girls, but the external sex organs still look similar in both sexes.

By the second half of the month, your baby's umbilical cord is well formed. It contains two arteries, which carry waste away from its blood to yours, and one vein, which brings nourishment to it from you. Your blood never actually mixes with your baby's. Instead, a membrane in the placenta allows substances in the blood, but not blood itself, to pass through.

Your baby's back starts to straighten, and its elbows and knees can bend. The tail will disappear completely by the end of the month. The head still makes up about half of your baby's body.

By the end of the third month, the baby is about 2 inches long (measuring from the top of the head to the bottom of the buttocks) and weighs a little less than an ounce.

Here's where I'm headed this month:

When you ask your doctor why you're either laughing, crying, or going after someone with a frying pan, she'll say, "It's hormones."

This may explain why I just about weeped at the end of The Amazing Race last week. Big baby!