3 Months Pregnant Belly – What Does It Look Like?

During the first trimester, only you can feel your pregnancy. Anyone looking at your stomach, and not the symptoms, can barely tell. By the third month, most of the initial nastiness is over, but you aren’t out of the woods, yet. So, at 3 months pregnant belly, what does it look like?

If this is your first pregnancy, or you possess an abdominal muscle six-pack, your baby bump may not show a lot at three months. But each woman’s body is unique, and if you’ve had subsequent pregnancies your belly is likely to be protruding surreptitiously. Your overall weight, height, and core muscular strength determine how visible your tummy is.

You can’t compare your 3^rd month’s pregnancy belly with another expectant mother, even when you’re both ending the first trimester. The bottom line remains that your baby bump’s size is as individual as yours. Find out what to expect when you clock this milestone and the features you’d expect to find in your unborn baby’s development.

What Happens to My Baby Inside a Three Months Pregnant Belly?

During the third month of pregnancy, starting from nine weeks, your uterus is now the size of a grapefruit. It’s lifted into your abdomen, filling up the pelvic area, and as such your belly is beginning to slowly start showing. In this phase, your first trimester is ending, and if symptoms like morning sickness are present, their severity has subsided. Some changes characterize this period, either manifesting in the 9^th, 10^th, 11^th, or 12^th week.

By week 10, the embryo has turned into a fetus, and the tail has disappeared. Your baby is now between one and 1.5 inches long, human-shaped but with alien-like features such as a massive head, webbed toes, and fingers. The umbilical cord is well developed and connects to the placenta. That’s what provides your child with respiration, nutrition, and excretion, all absorbed from and back into your blood.

Between weeks 11 and 12, the fetus can be measured from the crown of its head to the bottom. That’s termed Crown-Rump Length or CRL, which in the third month is two to three inches. Your baby weighs 0.80 ounces and is the size of a pea pod. Toes and fingers aren’t webbed anymore while the bones begin to harden.

Fingernails and much of the skin are developing, and external sex organs begin to appear, triggered by your pregnancy hormones. With a brain starting to kick in, your fetus can now make spontaneous movements. Their tiny kidneys also start filtering blood, and sweat glands appear. At this stage, the baby hasn’t developed a single wisp of hair, and their eyelids are still fused.

How Does My Belly Look Like During The 3^rd Month of Pregnancy?

The third month is characterized by many of your symptoms from the first two months. Some even become worse, but others normalize. Nausea doesn’t get better, and your breasts continue to change, the area around your nipple or areola, enlarging and darkening. You’ll gain a little less weight than initially, usually not more than two pounds, but the rate depends on your body structure.

If this is your first baby, your belly will start showing between 16 and 20 weeks. Some mums don’t have noticeable baby bumps until the end of the second trimester, which begins from the fourth month. However, changes during the first eight weeks of pregnancy will have made you look or appear different. That’s true even when there isn’t much roundness in your midriff.

For your second or subsequent pregnancy, you’ll show sooner. You may even feel your baby moving much earlier. Normally, your body has already been through the process and adjusts accordingly to expected symptoms. Your abdominal muscles have already stretched, so your belly will readily reveal the slightest uterine expansion by the third month.

Another reason to show early is age, as an older woman has a stomach that adapts easily to looking pregnant. You may also have relaxed core muscles, and by the end of the first trimester, you’ll look pregnant. However, if you are overweight or have a rounded solid frame, you may not show at all during the third month.

Should I Be Concerned That My Belly Doesn’t Look Pregnant in the Third Month?

There should be no concerns surrounding why your belly hasn’t started to show at three months of pregnancy. It’s only when you’re approaching the third trimester, and there’s no sign of a bump that you can start worrying. But by then, a barrage of tests and ultrasounds will have confirmed your unborn baby’s health, size, and expected date of birth.

Although it’s not yet time for a 3D/4D ultrasound, your doctor will have to determine your baby’s features with a 2D scan at between eight and eleven weeks. That’s known as the 12-week scan, and the first time you’ll have albeit a substantial image of your baby.

While a midwife keeps track of your uterine gestational weight, other tests will have been run by this stage, including blood, urine for proteinuria. If you have a small body frame, it could be a reason your belly doesn’t show in the third month of pregnancy. An inadequate gestational weight can result from low blood pressure, temperature regulation difficulties, and respiration or oxygen level problems.

Hypertension is also a risk that results in stunted fetal growth and can lead to preterm labor or miscarriage. Your belly may also not be noticeable if you’re overweight. That can also affect the gestational weight of your baby at three months. Other risks of obesity during pregnancy include fetal diabetes mellitus, preeclampsia, premature birth, and emergency C-section delivery.

Conclusion

Three months isn’t exactly a baby bump showing stage of pregnancy, but there could be roundness that’s more exuberant than a full stomach. Your family, friends, or work colleagues with whom you’ll want to share this milestone can see a small protrusion on your belly. By this time, your uterus is softball-sized, stretching above your pubic bone, and you’ve gained between two and four pounds in weight.