Your Pregnancy Week-by-Week - 15 Weeks Pregnant
Baby is looking more like a baby
Are you curious why your body is beginning to imitate that of a pregnant woman? It's because your baby is increasingly becoming larger per week at 15 weeks pregnant — he's now 4 inches long.
Do you want a more appealing visual? Hold a pear in your hand to get an idea of how tall your darling is. When you've finished looking, eat the pear for a tasty and nutritious snack!
Do you want a more appealing visual? Hold a pear in your hand to get an idea of how tall your darling is. When you've finished looking, eat the pear for a tasty and nutritious snack!
Your fetus is also becoming more and more like the infant you're picturing in your dreams with each passing week. The ears are now better placed on the sides of the head — they were originally in the throat — and the eyes are shifting from the side of the head to the front of the forehead, where they will soon meet your caring gaze.
15 weeks pregnant is how many months?
You're in month 4 of your pregnancy if you're 15 weeks old. There are just 5 months left!
Baby is practicing for the outside world
So, what keeps your baby occupied during the day? The majority of the time, the fetus is in rehearsals — training, practicing, practicing in preparation for the big debut. Babies practice breathing, licking, and swallowing movements so that when they leave your warm womb and enter your warm home, they'll be prepared to survive.
Your fetus is still taking regular aerobics lessons — kicking, curling fingers, and shaking those little arms and legs — but you won't notice because he just weighs about 212 ounces.
Your Body at Week 15
The golden months
Is it possible to get any better than this? Some of the bothersome early pregnancy signs have faded by this week, and you're not too big to get around — or get out of your chair — at 15 weeks.
Now that you can open your mouth wide without vomiting up or gagging on excess spit, it's time to concentrate on your mouth, which, believe it or not, is undergoing a host of pregnancy-related changes.
Bleeding gums and dental care
Say "cheese" and examine yourself in the mirror. When you brush or floss, you can find that your gums are raw, bloated, and sometimes tender, sensitive, or vulnerable to bleeding. Pregnancy hormones are at work once more, this time causing gingivitis, an illness and inflammation of the gums, by causing them to respond differently to bacteria in plaque.
Hormones are also blamed for persistent stuffy noses and sometimes nosebleeds. If you look closely enough, you might find a tiny bump on your gums known as a pregnancy tumor. Before you get all worked up, remember that these innocuous growths are frighteningly called but absolutely painless. If you do have one, it should go away after the baby is born.
What's much scarier is what can happen if you don't look after your teeth as you're expecting. Gingivitis can lead to periodontitis, an inflammation of the bones and tissues that protect your teeth, and research has related periodontitis to premature labour and preeclampsia.
Prevention is crucial: Gum swelling, bruising, and soreness can be significantly minimized with proper oral hygiene, which requires daily dental treatment, cleaning at least twice a day, and gentle flossing once a day.
Gaining weight
It's weight gain time now, if you only gained an ounce during the first trimester due to all that toilet kissing, or you gained more ounces — and pounds — than you anticipated.
Your baby is getting bigger and bigger starting in the second trimester, and you should be too. Make the slogan "slow and steady" and strive for a weekly weight gain of around 1 pound.
But bear in mind that this is an average, so gaining half a pound one week and a pound and a half the next is great as long as you're gaining only 4 pounds per month.
If you're measuring yourself at home, once a week or once every other week should suffice; just make sure you do so regularly, at about the same time and under the same conditions — for example, undressed and right after waking up. Alternatively, have the doctor measure you at your weekly appointments.