Fetal development is how a fetus grows during pregnancy. It begins at conception and ends at birth. Many changes occur to the fetus and the pregnant person in this time.
In human prenatal development, fetal development begins from the ninth week after fertilization (which is the eleventh week of gestational age) and continues until the birth of a newborn.
Curious about how your baby is developing in the womb? Here's a breakdown of fetal development week by week.
Here is a week-by-week walkthrough of the stages of fetal development. There are two ways to measure what stage of development...
Fetal development from conception to term, including a gestational age calculator from the estimated due date and a fetal development critical periods chart.
Fetal development starts soon after conception. Find out how your baby grows and develops during the first trimester. You're pregnant. Congratulations! As your pregnancy goes on, you may wonder how your baby is growing and developing.
At the end of the tenth week of pregnancy (8 weeks after fertilization), the fetal stage begins. During this stage, the organs and systems that have already formed grow and develop as follows:
From the moment of conception, your baby begins a remarkable journey of growth and development. What starts as a single fertilized cell quickly becomes a complex and beautifully organized human being. Understanding fetal development can help you feel more connected to your pregnancy and more confident in what is happening inside your body.
Biologists arbitrarily speak of the earliest stages of development of the fertilized egg as the embryonic period, which ends when the external form of the embryo begins to resemble clearly the newborn of the group to which it belongs. The next period, culminating in birth, is the fetal period.