Week 15: Navel Oranges and Flossing

Week 15...

CNP, 2014

The little bambino is the size of a naval orange this week, and I am having a love affair with flossing and brushing my teeth, but what really has captivated my attention is this central question:
"Why don't fish have ears?"

Let me explain.  Over the last several weeks of grocery aisle illustrations, I've written about the eyes or the ears 'migrating' into place.  I didn't really give it much thought.  I mean, right now the head of our child takes up most of its body size, and let's be honest--it has a lot of improvements to make until it doesn't look like an alien.  For example:

Even though it has fingerprints, its intestines were outside of its body just two weeks ago.  ALL of its intestines.  Swimming lazily in amniotic fluid.  

It has a cute downy coat of hair.  And transparent skin.  These seem rather adorable traits to me, but if my first view of this little bambino is covered in peach fuzz-invisible skin, it'll give me some pause. 

My partner doesn't like me referring to our child as "it."  The bambino, he/she... it does have a sex right now (last week it either started growing a prostrate or ovarian follicles), but we won't know for another five weeks until you can see 'parts' on an ultrasound.  Not knowing the sex (and finding it difficult to juggle he/she pronouns like lots of baby books do) does give the bambino an essence of other worldliness.  (I will TRY the he/she juggling... I swear.)

Just fifteen weeks ago he was a single cell.  Enough said.

As of this week, her bones are beginning to ossify.  This might not sound very glamorous, but up to this point I've been carrying elasti-girl in my womb, and x-rays of her would show no bones at all. 

So, so what if the bambino has ears, but they were on its neck.  It didn't seem like any herculean effort to imagine that they would migrate as well, given all of the other information, right?

Well, here is why I am so captivated.  Ears, it turns out, are modified gill structures.  In early embryonic stages, we have gill slits on our necks that later develop into our Eustachian tubes, middle ear, tonsils, parathyroid, and thymus.  Which means... that fish don't have ears, and they can't get tonsillitis... because they don't have either... they have gills instead.  And our little bambino's ears have been migrating from his neck to (hopefully) the proper place on either side of his head as his body has repurposed some structures (gills) in favor of others.

Humans are so cool.

(Note to self: does this mean that Waterworld is a complete fantasy, as Kevin Costner had ears and gills?  Poo.)

Speaking of movies, one of my favorite movies growing up was Dirty Dancing, and I know an embarrassing number of quotes from it.  There is one scene in which Baby shows up to a late night hotel party, and admits that she was there in attendance only because she "carried a watermelon."

Week 15, and my uterus this week is, tah dah! the size of a small mellon.  Nobody's gonna put baby in the corner, but I can at least get some humor from my growing size.

...and desire to brush my teeth at least five times a day.  I have always been obsessed with a clean mouth, but with the 50% increased red blood cell production, increased vascularization to the gums (think pregnancy glow), and decreased immune system, I do love a good tooth brushing now especially.  I might be a bit overly enthuiastic.

CNP, 2014

Until next week,
Cat