Your baby this week
Your baby is about the size of a strawberry — roughly an inch and a quarter long. The details are getting deliciously specific: fingers and toes have separated (no more paddles), the tiniest nails are beginning, elbows and wrists bend, and your baby stretches and even swallows amniotic fluid — all far too small to feel.
Inside, the story turns from forming to functioning: the heart, brain, kidneys, liver and intestines are in place and starting to work together. The kidneys produce urine, all twenty baby-tooth buds sit quietly in the gums, and the vocal cords are forming. Embryologists consider the end of week 10 the close of the most critical building period of the whole pregnancy — ahead lies mostly growth and refinement.
Your body & symptoms
Nausea may not have read the memo yet, but for many moms the direction starts to change around now, as the placenta takes over. New sensations can include brief round-ligament twinges when you stand quickly, more visible veins — your blood volume is up a lot — sensitive or bleeding gums when you brush, and skin doing its hormone weather.
Weight gain so far is usually small — a few pounds at most, or none at all — and the "bump" is still mostly bloating. Comfort waistbands are your friends this week.
Screening choices: NIPT & what to ask
From about week 10, many doctors offer a blood test called NIPT (non-invasive prenatal testing, also called cell-free DNA screening). It screens for certain chromosomal conditions from a simple blood draw.
Questions worth asking: What does it screen for — and what doesn't it? Is it a screening (a risk estimate) rather than a diagnosis? How and when do results come, and what are the next steps if a result is high-chance? Screening is always your choice — a calm conversation beats a stress spiral.