Track your pregnancy with our app: [ Ссылка ] Your growing baby can now hear some sounds, like your heartbeat, your digestive tract and the soothing sound of your voice.

Learn more about week 18 of pregnancy: [ Ссылка ]

Transcript:

At 18 weeks, your baby is 5 ½ inches long, give or take, about the size of a cucumber, and 5 to 6 ½ ounces in weight. But don't let your little one's size fool you: There are big things going on in that body this week.

Under major construction now is your baby's nervous system, which coordinates every move, including those flutters you may soon start to feel. Right now, baby's brain, spinal cord and nerves get a boost from myelin, a substance that coats the nerves and speeds up the time it takes for messages to travel along nerve cells. Myelin also helps baby's nerves form more complex connections, enabling your teeny mover and shaker to perfect some intricate moves, such as thumb sucking, hand clasping and curling fingers around the umbilical cord.

And speaking of fingers, your one-of-a-kind baby is truly one-of-a-kind now, complete with unique fingerprints. And hear this: Baby's ears have arrived at their final destination, the sides of the head, and the tiny bones inside the inner ear have hardened, allowing your little one to hear some sounds. Among the sounds first heard, besides your heartbeat and the gurgling of your digestive tract? The soothing sound of your voice. And thanks to all the time they spend listening to it in utero, research suggests that babies are able to identify their mom's voice soon after birth. So go ahead, rock out in the shower, talk up a storm to yourself, your cutie is all ears.

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