Your baby
The muscles are now far enough along for your baby to move. The arms and legs move in small jerks, and the hands, no bigger than a pea, can wriggle. Not that you feel any of it yet — you will have to be patient a while longer for that. Those hands even have fingers and a thumb now.
The legs are growing too. Your child already has knees, ankles and toes. And the face is becoming more and more a real one: there is even a tiny snub nose, a mouth and a tongue. From this point on the experts no longer speak of an embryo but of a foetus, and that is what they will call your child until the birth.
You
You get up tired in the morning, you feel listless all day, and by half past eight in the evening you are rolling into bed exhausted. For many pregnant women the whole day is coloured by tiredness.
That is not surprising at all. From the moment the fertilised egg settled into your womb, your body has been preparing for the pregnancy: your womb is growing, your heartbeat is quicker, you breathe differently, your blood volume is increasing.
A great deal is going on in a pregnant body and that simply takes a lot of energy. Add all the emotions around your brand-new pregnancy and it is clear: all these changes cost extra energy. No wonder you feel so dreadfully tired.
Give in to the tiredness as much as you can and try not to take on too much. Lie down with your legs up and do not feel guilty about letting things slide for a while. With so much going on in a pregnant body, energy is bound to run short. By thirteen weeks the worst of the tiredness is usually behind you.
The dating scan
Every pregnant woman is offered a dating scan during or after the first visit to the midwife. This scan is done at around 10 to 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Extra vitamins
When you are pregnant you need extra calcium to build your baby's bones, and vitamin D is needed to make enough calcium available. If you get little sunlight — because you are rarely outdoors, or wear clothing that covers your face and hands, or have darker skin — the Health Council advises taking 10 mcg of vitamin D a day.
Can you take paracetamol?
Do you have a headache? Then you may take paracetamol, without codeine or caffeine. Use as little as possible: at most four 500 mg tablets a day. Taking nothing at all is of course better.
First trimester
