10 weeks pregnant - symptoms, fetal development and what to consider

Looking for a pregnancy week by week guide? This handy round up contains everything you need to know about being 10 weeks pregnant.

It's a mixed bag this week of pregnancy, with strange dreams featuring. But it's all for a good cause because your baby now has fingers and toes at 10 weeks. Do you dream of giving birth to a furry animal or forgetting your baby at the shops? Don't worry, you're not losing your marbles. Studies have found that around 70% of women have frequent pregnancy-related dreams. Here's what's happening when you're 10 weeks pregnant...

Symptoms at 10 weeks pregnant

The usual complaints of early pregnancy such as morning sickness and fatigue persist, but around this point in pregnancy you may also find constipation becomes bit of a problem.

This is the result of pregnancy hormones causing your bowel muscles to become sluggish and lazy. There's plenty you can do to keep things moving. Just make sure you drink plenty of water and eat a diet which has plenty of fibre such as wholegrain breads and cereals. Unfortunately, another unpleasant and embarrassing side effect of pregnancy is flatulence.

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Fetal development at 10 week pregnant

Your baby's face is well formed. Eyelids are more developed and the outside of tiny ears are starting to properly form on either side of their head while inside the ear canals are forming. Your baby's little face now has an upper lip and two tiny nostrils have appeared in their newly formed nose.

The jawbones are developing and, amazing as it may sound, they already contain all of your baby's future milk teeth. They can even make a little fist with their fingers. Your baby is roughly 4cm long.

Change you should make at 10 weeks pregnant

You may have your booking in appointment this week, and possibly a dating scan too. Some women may have a diagnostic test known as Chorionic Villus Sampling (CVS) this week. Ten weeks is the very earliest point at which it can be carried. It more usually occurs between 11-14 weeks.

At this early stage it is too early to have had screening tests for Down's Syndrome, so those women being offered a CVS will be those with a family history of cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy, or those women for whom an earlier blood screening test has identified as having a high risk of having a baby with sickle cell anaemia or thalassaemia.

CVS can be conducted in one of two ways. A sample of cells called chorionic villi cells will be taken from your placenta either via a needle which is inserted through your abdomen, or via a tube inserted through the neck of the womb.

The procedure takes about five minutes, and because this is an invasive test it does carry a small risk of miscarriage of around 1%. Because the chorionic villi come from the division of the fertilised egg they share the same DNA as your growing baby, including any possible genetic abnormality.

This means that any defect found in the sample of chorionic villi will also be present in the foetus.

Further advice and information:

1. Visit the NHS for more pregnancy week by week advice
2. Download a pregnancy tracker app
3. View all our pregnancy week by week guides