10 Weeks and a Book Recommendation

I'm awe that God has brought us to double-digit weeks! Here's what's going on with baby at 10 weeks:

Your astonishingly tiny baby has been hard at work growing as fast as possible—almost doubling in size in the past three weeks! Amazingly, you’re in for a repeat size doubling performance within the next three weeks! Your tiny champion still weighs less than a quarter of an ounce but has already completed the most critical stage of their development. Using Doppler technology, your doctor or gynecologist can let you hear their tiny rapid fetal heartbeats this week (145-165 beats per minute!). Chances for miscarriage are greatly reduced when the heartbeat can be detected, so take a sigh of relief if you’ve been needing one—it hasn’t been an easy ten weeks! What’s more, they’re getting ready to make their first baby poop! Your little one’s major organ systems are developing, including a functioning digestive tract capable of moving food all the way through their bowels. The final shiny gold star on their fetal behavior chart for the week: your little scrapper has already developed defense mechanisms to protect them on reflex!

and my IPOD App says this:

This week your baby is officially considered a foetus, which means "little one." Vital organs are formed and are starting to work together. Your baby is now aw big as a prune. Tiny toes have formed. External genitalia is beginning to differentiate. External ears are formed, as is the upper lip. The biggest accomplishment this week is the disappearance of the tail!

I also have a book recommendation:



Expecting: Praying for Your Child's Development-Body and Soul is a devotional that walks you through what is happening with your child's physical development, and then includes a devotional on praying for that specific trait, both physically and spiritually.

For example, this week's entry focused on the upper lip. And the devotional included suggestions to pray for your child's facial development and for her self-esteem, that she would always see herself as beautiful in God's sight. It then guided the reader through a devotional and prayer that your child would always use her mouth to speak the words of the Lord, to speak praise and love to people, and to refrain from unkind and unclean talk. In another section where it talked about ears and eyes, she suggested praying that your child would hear the Lord, and see people as Jesus sees them. In the week on the formation of the brain, she suggests that you pray that your child would use her mind, whatever its capacity, to the best of her abilities, and that she would have the mind of Christ.

There's also a devotional for the mom to pray for HER growing body changes, too. When it talks about your growing womb that protects your baby, it teaches you to pray about protecting your child all the days of her life.

I've really enjoyed it and it's really helped me pray for our baby more specifically. The chapters are short (3-4 pages) and it's just one chapter per week. There's also a space at the end of each chapter to journal. It's just a really neat little book and if you're pregnant or know someone who is, I would recommend it.

I will put a disclaimer here and say that I've only read 1/4 of it because I don't want to read ahead, so forgive me if the book suddenly goes sour, but I really don't think it will.

On the other hand, I do NOT recommend this book: Praying Through Your Pregnancy: An Inspirational Week-by-Week Guide for Moms-to-Be. I'm equally as far through this book (through 10 weeks) and my major complaint with it is that it's very "name it and claim it," which readers know from past reviews, is a theology I have a huge problem with. She claims a right to a quick ability to get pregnant, an easy, complication-free pregnancy, and a perfectly-formed child. While I'm sure we all would love these things, and want them, it's not something I see scriptural evidence that we're entitled to, and anecdotal evidence from the lives of many Christians demonstrates that God doesn't always work that way. My IF friends will also have a hard time because she spends the first few chapters talking about her "difficulty to get pregnant," which means, it took her 4 months. Definitely take a pass on this book.

I have to be at work in 40 minutes so I need to sign off! But definitely check out that first book if you can!