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Info Centre - Your pregnancy: 5-8 weeks
Your pregnancy: 5-8 weeks
Your baby
No longer a blastocyst but an embryo, your baby does a lot of growing in this month. By eight weeks of pregnancy, she will be about 10mm long from crown to rump. Her heart will start beating, and the little stubs that will turn into her legs and arms appear, as well as the beginnings of a liver, pancreas, lungs and stomach. The baby’s nervous system is also developing, and the baby has blood vessels that will become the umbilical cord that connects her to you.
You
You may begin to notice changes in your body that show you are pregnant, including:
- Sore breasts
- Tiredness
- Going off certain foods or developing cravings for other. Often coffee becomes disliked
- A metallic feeling in your mouth
- A need to urinate more often
- Nausea
- Sickness
Sickness experienced in pregnancy is often referred to as “morning sickness”, though many women experience it throughout the day. It is thought to be caused by the amount of hcg hormone in your body.
Sickness can be debilitating. Every woman has a different way of dealing with it, but there is no one solution that works for everyone.
Here are some tips:
- Eat little and often
- Try sucking lemons or peppermints
- Try eating ginger biscuits or drinking ginger tea
- Take vitamin B6 tablets or eat food that contains B6, such as cereals, bananas, baked potatoes, lentils or tinned fish
- Rest as much as you can
See “Pregnancy niggles and discomforts” for more suggestions and information.
Your midwife is your first point of contact with the health services when you are pregnant. To find a midwife, you may need to contact your GP surgery. See "The role of a midwife" for more information about how to contact a midwife. You can arrange your first appointment, or booking-in appointment, by going directly to your midwife. The booking-in appointment is the first antenatal check of your pregnancy, in which you will meet a midwife who will carry out some health checks and talk you through your options for giving birth. Having the booking-in appointment before you are 10 weeks pregnant gives you time to consider your screening options. See “Screening and testing” for more information. At this appointment you can get information about where to have your baby, but you won’t be asked to make any decisions at this point.
- Home. See “Home birth” for general information to help you decide about giving birth at home, and the "Home birth: all you need to know” for practical advice about organising a home birth.
- Midwifery-led units, or birth centres, can be situated inside a hospital, in hospital grounds or as stand-alone units away from a hospital. Some are private, some are funded by the NHS. They are run by midwives rather than consultants, and offer a comfortable environment in which to give birth. If the unit is not near a hospital, it will generally admit only women who are low-risk and unlikely to have complications.
- Hospital. Most women give birth in consultant-led units in hospital. See also the “Where will my baby be born?” page.
Telling people you are pregnant
It can be hard to know when to tell friends and colleagues that you are pregnant, but most people tell only very close relatives until three months have passed. About 15-20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, and of those more than 80% happen in the first 12 weeks. So at this early stage of pregnancy, you might still want to avoid telling anyone other than your partner and close relatives. See “Miscarriage” for more information.
