How BITB sizes up

"18 weeks today and I just wanted to share with everyone the fun “size chart” that is used for describing the baby growing in my belly.

For some reason, and maybe I touched upon this with the Bucky Blog (I can’t recall), food items are used for size comparisons. It makes for a good visual, but also skews the situation since sometimes it’s based on weight and sometimes on shape, and really I don’t think a human fetus is ever theshape of an avocado. Maybe length or weight, but not shape; that would be one funny looking baby!

Weeks one through three are cellular and thus difficult to give an example of size. Week four starts the food chart off with the embryo being the size of a poppy seed. That’s small.

Week 5 – sesame seed
6 – Lentil bean
7 – Blueberry
8 – Kidney bean
9 – Grape
10 – Kumquat
11 – Fig
12 – Lime
13 – Medium Shrimp
14 – Lemon
15 – Apple
16 – Avocado
17 – Turnip (or rather weighs as much as)
18 – Bell Pepper (or rather the length of)

And now, what we have to look forward to, they get a little stranger from here on out:

19 – Heirloom Tomato
20 – Banana (or rather the length of)
21 – Carrot (length of)
22 – Spaghetti Squash (length of)
23 – Large Mango (weight of-one pound)
24 – Ear of Corn (length of-one foot long)
25 – Rutabaga (weight)
26 – English Hothouse Cucumber (length)
27 – Head of Cauliflower (weight)
28 – Chinese Cabbage (weight)
29 – Butternut Squash (weight)
30 – Cabbage (weight)
31 – 4 Naval Oranges (combined weight)
32 – Large Jicama (weight)
33 – Pineapple (weight-four pounds)
34- Cantaloupe (weight)
35 – Honeydew Melon (weight)
36 – Crenshaw Melon (weight)
37 – Swiss Chard (length)
38 – Leek (length)
39 – Mini Watermelon (weight-seven pounds)
40 – Small Pumpkin (weight)
And I don’t want to think about what’s after 40 weeks!"
--Clare 9/3/08