Your baby this week
13 weeks pregnant

Changes in you

Pregnant woman

Some changes in your body that you might notice include having larger breasts, a linea nigra (a vertical brown-black line running down the abdomen), mask of pregnancy (brown patches that can appear on the face and neck), and vascular spiders or angiomas (small red elevations on the skin of the face, neck, chest and arms that extend upward). These conditions may be caused by high levels of estrogen, and most will disappear, or recede, after the birth.

>>> More changes in your pregnant body

How to breathe?

All your life, you breathe in and out. So what's the point of "breathing exercises" being taught during childbirth classes?

There are several purposes to learning breathing exercises. Breathing, of course, gets oxygen to you and the baby. By controlling your breathing you can help yourself to relax and allow the contractions to do their work. It can also give you the feeling of having more control over your body.

Practicing slow deep breathing can give you confidence about your ability to stay calm and cope during labor. This, in turn, can help you avoid hyperventilation. You can use a deep or cleansing breath as a signal to you to relax. When you practice this, you become conditioned to the idea that every time you take a deep breath and let it out slowly, you relax. Then during labor each time you have a contraction you take a cleansing breath and relax. It also helps signal your partner that you are having a contraction. Ending each contraction with a cleansing breath helps you relax in between contractions too.

Find out more about this topic here!

Clean - but safe?

Are household cleaners safe to use during pregnancy? When is comes to household cleaners, reading the safety information on the label is very important for pregnant and nursing moms. Most cleaners can be safely utilized with some basic precautions, says Obstetrician/Gynecologist David Barrere. Click here to get specifics!


Want some good nutrition news? Chocolate candiesElizabeth Triche of Yale University and her colleagues discovered that pregnant women who ate more chocolate (about one candy bar a day) during their first and second trimester were 70% less likely to develop preeclampsia than women who reported eating less chocolate.

Dark chocolate is the best chocolate to eat during pregnancy, the study reports, and also just because it may be healthy the researchers remind women, everything in moderation. (And even if chocolate is good for you, extra pounds are still a pregnancy health problem.)

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