Baby: Week 5

Into your second month now, you are five weeks old!

Human embryo 5-6 weeks after fertilisation. Photo Credit - Science Photo Library

Major systems are forming: your brain, cranial nerves, heartbeat, vertebra, bone tissue, blood vessels. As usual, little details of growth accompany major internal changes. Now just over 1cm long, you have fingers and toes, with slight webbing, and you’re moving in fits and starts.  Your tooth buds, palate, tongue and eyelids are forming too! The liver is manufacturing your own red blood cells; soon the bone marrow (which makes blood cells in adult life) will take over this function.  

Between now and 20 weeks, you will grow rapidly. Your heart and brain and other organs will become more specialised and complicated; your pancreas now exists although it is too young to produce insulin.[1] By the end of this week, you might be a little bigger than the top of a pencil eraser.[2]

 

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