From the Preface - This calendar is designed for expectant parents as an easy-to-use guide to take you through all the major developmental milestones that happen during the next 266 days (38 weeks) culminating in the birth of your child. This fetal development calendar provides a day-by-day account of the changes in your child as it progresses through the embryonic and fetal stages. Facts about the baby are indicated by the baby image shown. You will learn when your baby's bones begin to appear and when fingernails form, when it can hear and kick, what it can sense and perceive, learn and remember. Included also are physiological and psychological changes the mother may experience at each stage of pregnancy. As a place marker, this 'pregnant woman' image indicates the passage presenting information about the mother. The development of your baby is organized into lunar months each consisting of 28 days, with four weeks per month. The developmental events described are synchronized with the moment of conception, and continue each day until birth 266 days later. The calendar starts at conception or fertilization, which is probably a few weeks earlier than when you received this calendar. Therefore, you may want to read through the 2 or 3 weeks that your baby has progressed up to your current Day of pregnancy. As you'll see, not every day contains a noticeable external change in your baby but that's part of the miracle of development. I tried to present the most important information without getting bogged down in too much detail. References are given for further reading where you can explore a topic in detail. You'll have many questions flash through your mind that you'll want to ask your health care provider. Take this book with you to your visits. Most pages have a space to jot down questions so that you'll be reminded what to ask at each appointment. Also write down the suggestions or advice given to you by your doctor, nurse or midwife.

My writing this calendar was inspired by the experiences my wife and I had prior to the birth of our first daughter, Anna. We were curious about her day-to-day development from the very start, wondering what she looked like each day and how she was growing. We quickly learned that the questions we had were not answered in most of the books commonly available. We wanted to know what was going on with our baby now...today. We found ourselves consulting primary medical textbooks to view pictures of babies at various stages of development to satisfy our curiosity. My training as a behavioral neuroscientist helped me to research the range and complexity of behaviors shown by these unborn babies at the very earliest stages of development. Unlike earlier ideas of the unborn as 'witless tadpoles,' I have come to appreciate the sophistication of the behavior shown by developing babies. Unborn babies are behaving, reacting, learning beings whose abilities are just starting to be appreciated. What I have realized in the course of this work is that unborn babies are clearly more advanced than we commonly believe and that they will be shown, over time, to be very capable and behaviorally complex, much earlier than ever imagined. The tools to discover many of these fascinating behaviors have yet to be invented. As you progress through this book you will see that a baby is a very competent being adapted to the aquatic environment of the womb and forced to adapt to a terrestrial environment after birth. This change in environment contributes to the apparent helplessness of the newborn. I wish to thank my wife, Toni, for her helpful editing and content suggestions that have made this calendar more 'user-friendly' and clear. I hope this calendar answers some of the questions that arise each and every day during the course of your pregnancy and enhances the excitement that accompanies these very special days leading up to the birth of your new child

About the Author - William F. Supple. Jr., Ph. D. received his doctorate in Psychology/ Neuroscience from Dartmouth College and is a former Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Vermont. He is the author of over 50 scientific papers and several scholarly books on the topic of learning and memory. His writing 'Becoming a Baby' was inspired during his wife's first pregnancy with their daughter Anna. They wondered what their child looked like every day and what changes were happening. There were no suitable books that provided this information; so he wrote it. He lives in Shelburne, Vermont with his wife Antoinette and their three children, Anna, Laura and Rayne.

Becoming a Baby ...... How Your Unborn Baby Grows from Day-to-Day .........Prenatal Development Calendar
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