3 Weeks Pregnant
What’s happening this week
You’re 3 weeks pregnant and something miraculous happened this week you have a baby growing inside you! Read about how to adjust your diet.
How is my baby developing?
An extraordinary encounter has taken place – a sperm fertilized your egg. After fertilization, the egg starts dividing becoming a bundle of cells called a blastocyst.
It travels down to the uterus, relying only on its own nutrients to survive and then embeds itself into the uterine wall.
Amniotic fluid starts accumulating in a cavity inside the blastocyst that will become the amniotic sac.
While the placenta is developing, microscopic tunnels connect your baby to your uterine wall to receive oxygen and nutrients.
The blastocyst continues to divide, and you can start to see different layers which will form the various parts of your baby’s body -the inside layer will form the urinary and digestive systems, the middle layer will form muscle, heart, bones and blood vessels and the outside layer will form nervous system, brain, backbone, skin, eyes, and ears.
By the end of this week, your baby is firmly implanted and the placenta is well under-way to take over by the end of next week.
How is my body changing?
You’re 3 weeks pregnant but at this stage, you probably won’t feel any different from normal.
You won’t be able to test for pregnancy for another week or so. Even sensitive pregnancy tests cannot detect a pregnancy until two or three days before your period is due to arrive.
Some of the 3 weeks pregnant symptoms are mild abdominal cramping and implantation spotting are the first signs of conception, but over the next couple of weeks, you’ll start to have other symptoms.
These may include elevated body temperature, fatigue as pregnancy hormones make you sleepy, swollen breasts painful to touch and increasing in size, frequent urination due to increase blood volume going through the kidneys, overwhelmed by certain smells, experience food aversions or cravings, pregnancy “glow”, increased clumsiness and more susceptible to colds and infections.
Essential changes in your diet
Even at this early stage, it’s essential you maintain a good healthy diet with an appropriate intake of essential nutrients, especially folic acid, protein, calcium, and iron.
- Given that folic acid helps prevent defects of the neural tube, a folic acid supplement is essential.
- Protein is the building block of new tissue, so you should double intake of protein to at least 60 grams a day. This can be 6 oz chicken breasts or tuna.
- At least 1,200 milligrams of calcium is necessary for bones and teeth. This can be 4 cups of milk or 2 cups of tofu.
- Iron is essential to support the increase in your baby’s blood volume and you should increase your consumption to 27-30 milligrams of iron daily. Iron supplements are also commonly used.