17 weeks pregnant: what is happening this week

Twelve centimetres, pomegranate-sized, and fingerprints are forming - already unique, already permanent. The eyes move behind closed lids. There is a reaction to loud noise from outside. The mouth opens and closes. Somewhere in the next few weeks comes the moment people remember: the first movement felt from the inside. It is described as bubbling, fluttering, a fish turning over, and it is routinely mistaken for digestion, because at this stage it feels exactly like digestion. First pregnancies tend to notice it later than second ones, often not until well past twenty weeks, and there is a wide normal range that has nothing to do with anything. Stretch marks may start appearing across the stomach, breasts, thighs. The waist has essentially gone. This is the fortnight where a pregnancy stops being private information and becomes visible information, which is a real transition and one that arrives at different speeds for the two people involved. Worth saying out loud rather than assuming: strangers are about to start commenting, and one of you has signed up for that and the other has not.