At 14 weeks pregnant, your baby is about the size of a lemon. From crown to rump (head to bottom), the baby measures roughly 3.5 inches (about 8.5 centimeters) and weighs around 1.5 ounces (approximately 43 grams). This marks the beginning of the second trimester, and your baby is growing rapidly from here.
How Big Is a Lemon, Really?
The lemon comparison gives you a quick visual, but it helps to think about what that means in your hand. Your baby is a little shorter than the length of your index finger, and weighs less than a small handful of grapes. That said, this is only the crown-to-rump measurement, which doesn’t include the legs. If the legs were stretched out straight, your baby would measure a bit longer, but because they’re curled up, crown-to-rump is the standard way size is tracked at this stage.
Where the Baby Sits in Your Body
At 13 to 14 weeks, the top of your uterus is usually just above your pubic bone. That’s right around where your pubic hair begins. For many people, this is the point when the lower belly starts to firm up and a small bump becomes noticeable, though this varies widely, especially between first and subsequent pregnancies. You likely can’t feel movement yet. Most people don’t notice kicks until somewhere between 16 and 22 weeks.
What’s Developing This Week
At 14 weeks, your baby’s neck has become more defined, which means the head is no longer tucked directly against the chest. This gives the baby a more recognizable profile on ultrasound. The eyes, which started on the sides of the head, have been migrating closer together toward the front of the face, and the ears are moving into their final position on the sides of the head.
Internally, major organs are in place and beginning to take on their specialized roles. The liver has started producing bile, the kidneys are beginning to filter fluid, and the spleen is getting involved in producing red blood cells. None of these organs are fully mature yet, but they’re functional in a basic sense and will continue refining their work over the coming weeks.
Your baby’s skin is still extremely thin and nearly translucent. Blood vessels are clearly visible beneath it. Lanugo, the soft, feathery hair that will eventually coat much of your baby’s body, hasn’t appeared yet. That typically develops between 16 and 20 weeks. When it does arrive, it serves a practical purpose: it helps a waxy protective coating called vernix stick to the skin, which shields the baby from the amniotic fluid. Lanugo also helps regulate the baby’s temperature until enough body fat builds up to do the job.
Can You Find Out the Sex at 14 Weeks?
Maybe, but it depends. By 14 weeks, external genitalia are still small and not fully differentiated, which makes ultrasound identification tricky. Studies show the accuracy of sex determination by ultrasound at 14 weeks is around 90%, up from just 46% at 11 weeks. That sounds high, but accuracy drops when the baby is in an awkward position, the umbilical cord is between the legs, or the ultrasound technician can’t get a clear angle.
Most experts recommend waiting until at least 18 weeks for a reliable visual confirmation of sex by ultrasound. If you want an earlier answer, noninvasive prenatal testing (a blood draw, not an ultrasound) can identify fetal sex with over 99% accuracy as early as 10 weeks, since it detects fragments of fetal DNA circulating in your blood.
What You Might Be Feeling
For many people, week 14 brings some physical relief. Nausea and fatigue from the first trimester often begin to ease around now, though they don’t disappear overnight for everyone. Your appetite may return or increase. Some people notice new symptoms replacing the old ones: round ligament pain (a sharp or pulling sensation on the sides of your lower belly when you move quickly), nasal congestion from increased blood flow to mucous membranes, and thicker or shinier hair.
Your uterus is still low in the pelvis, so you may feel more pressure in the lower abdomen than a true “bump” sensation. Weight gain to this point is typically in the range of 2 to 5 pounds total, though this varies based on how much nausea affected your eating in the first trimester.
How Growth Picks Up From Here
The second trimester is when your baby’s growth accelerates significantly. At 14 weeks your baby weighs about 1.5 ounces. By 18 weeks, that jumps to roughly 7 ounces. By the end of the second trimester at 27 weeks, your baby will weigh around 2 pounds. The lemon-sized baby you’re carrying now will be the length of a cucumber in just a few weeks, which is why many people find their belly grows noticeably faster during this trimester than the first.