Week 30: your baby is the size of a lumpfish

Your fetus now weighs around 1.3 kg, about the weight of a male lumpfish, a North Atlantic fish shaped less like a fish than like a warty, lopsided golf ball that happens to have fins.

Its pelvic fins are no longer fins. They have fused into a suction disc on its belly, and the lumpfish uses it to clamp onto a rock and stay there while the cold North Atlantic surge goes past. It is a poor swimmer and has arranged its life so that it does not need to be a good one.

Fatherhood is its real distinction. The female lays her eggs in a shallow nest and leaves. The male stays for six or seven weeks, fanning fresh water over them, driving off crabs, and holding position through storms and low tides that leave him exposed. He barely feeds the entire time.

Meanwhile, inside you

Your fetus this week is growing hair on their head and shedding the fine lanugo that covered their body. Their brain is developing fast, and they can now regulate their own body temperature a little better.