Pregnancy Update: Week 17

Mrs. Undaground is 17 weeks pregnant today. Next Friday, we hope to find out the gender. I've consulted a couple of baby websites for this vital information, that you can see below in green.

This is a period of rapid growth as the fat begins to form underneath the baby's skin.

If the child takes after his/her father, this fat will be undetectable until sometime after the 23rd birthday. It's all downhill from there, though you can generally lose some of that fat by consistently travelling uphill.

The reflexes are probably in place now as the baby sucks, swallows and blinks.

Our baby doesn't suck. Knock it off. Your website sucks. There, how do you like it?

Have you felt any fluttering in your uterus? You may be feeling your baby move any time now if you haven't already!

Yes!!! Mrs. Undaground called me yesterday at work to tell me she felt the baby move for the first time. She said that, at first, she thought it was just gas. I happen to know that my wife doesn't get gas. (There was that one incident about three years ago, but we agreed never to speak of it again.)

Anyway, for the record, the first movement was felt at 16 weeks, 6 days. To celebrate, I enjoyed a beer and Mrs. Undaground had some vodka. Not really.

Your baby is approximately 5 inches long and weighs in at about 140-145 grams (5 ounces). This means that the baby now weighs more than the placenta.

This also means our baby weighs about the same as a regulation baseball. The same baseball that will be placed in the left hand of my first-born son just minutes after his birth. The world needs more left handed pitchers. Daddy needs a new house in 20 years. Go, boy, and make millions with that golden arm.

If you were to get an abdominal x-ray, your baby's skeleton would be visible. His/her movements become stronger and more frequent now. Reflex movements are fully functional as baby will regularly suck and swallow and loud noises outside the uterus may actually cause the baby to startle.

Guess I should stop hiding behind doors and jumping out to scare Mrs. Undaground. I might scare the baby.