Second trimester · roughly month 6 · about 14 weeks to go

26 weeks pregnant

Everything Hello Belly has for week 26 — how your baby is developing, what your body is doing, and the small things that are easier to know in advance.

Your baby at 26 weeks

25–26 weeks

It seems to you that time has become eternal, but your baby uses every second for development and training. Now his lungs are ready to start breathing at any moment. Ears grew and even slightly protruded. The girl already has formed ovaries (with the future of your grandchildren inside), and the boy's testicles descend into the scrotum. So now you can get ready for a daughter or a son.

His skin is still very wrinkled from a constant stay in the liquid, but with new supplies of fat it slowly smoothes, hands and legs are becoming more round, and wrinkles appear on the elbows.

Feelings of the baby continue to develop. But now the baby's ability to feel pain has also been added to the pleasant sensations. This is reflected in his facial expression: he can smile or frown. Also, the strength of your baby grows: his muscles develop, so his flips and kicks become more tangible, and the movements get more coordinated. On ultrasound, you can see how he dexterously grabs himself by the legs, closes his face with his hands, sucks a finger, grabs the umbilical cord with hands. Already such a fine fellow, but weighs still less than a kilogram!

This week's open tip

Read it in full right here — no account needed.

Look lively!
Who’s that watching you? Tiny eyes that have been closed over the past few months (so that the retina, the part of the eye that focuses on images, could develop), begin to open this week.
Read the full tip →