7 WEEKS PREGNANT

Your Pregnancy: Week 7
If you're one of the "lucky" pregnant women to experience morning sickness (a poorly named symptom of pregnancy as it can strike at any time of the day), remember that it won't last forever. Most of the wooziness tapers off by the second trimester. Of course, mental wooziness can affect you throughout your pregnancy, as you think of your growing to-do list, or wonder about how you're life will change, or worry if you'll know how to handle it all. Luckily, the cure for that wooziness is laying your eyes on your new baby.

Wondering what's up with your body, your baby and your life this week? Read on ...

What You're Thinking:
"How can I feel like I'm hung over all day long when I've had nothing to drink in three weeks?"

Your Body
You're supposed to be "eating for two" but instead, it's hard for you to swallow water. As a result, you're "praying to the porcelain god for two." Morning sickness can leave a pregnant chick exhausted, weak and wondering what on earth she got herself into. Don't throw in the towel just yet, here's how to cope:

There are a whole bunch of tricks that pregnant women swear help to reduce nausea caused by morning sickness ... such as sucking on lemon drops or any other hard candy.

Sometimes certain foods can help relieve the symptoms of morning sickness. Also, blaming your partner for everything has been known to comfort many women in the throes of nausea.

Even if you're experiencing frequent vomiting, try not to worry, as your baby needs very little nourishment this early in the pregnancy. Good thing, since all you've eaten today is two boxes of saltines.

If you're noticing weight loss or dehydration, you could have hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe form of morning sickness that occurs very infrequently. Check with your doctor.

Your Baby
This week your baby's brain is growing at a mind-boggling 100 cells per minute within a see-through skull. If you could peer inside, you'd see those tiny brain cells growing and growing and growing (about as quickly as you feel like yours are shrinking and shrinking and shrinking with your "pregnancy brain"!). More high points include:

Your baby's face is becoming more defined this week. A tiny mouth hole (which will be ready to wail before you know it!), tongue, nostrils and ear indentations are visible. His or her eyes are wide open, but he doesn't have irises (the colored part) yet.

Baby's arm buds are growing. At this point they look more like microscopic ping-pong paddles than arms. Baby's leg buds are also forming and will look like tiny paddles by the end of the week.

The umbilical cord—the connection between your baby and the placenta—is now visible.

Your baby is now between 1/3 and 1/4 inch long—about the length of a Tic Tac and about as heavy as an eyelash. While that sounds tiny, he or she is approximately 10,000 times bigger than at conception. Crazy, huh?