Pregnancy Signs & Symptoms, Week by Week Pregnancy Guide

When thinking about the stages of prenatal development pregnancy you should know that there are three stages that the baby has to go through.

The first one is the germinal stage followed by the embryonic stage and the last one is the fetal stage that lasts for the longest period of time.

The germinal stage

This stage starts at the moment of conception. The fertilized egg is known as the zygote. A few hours after conception the zygote starts traveling towards the uterus where it will start to divide and grow. The embryo first divides into two, then into four, eight and so on.

Once there are eight cells, the cells start to differentiate based on the kind of cells that they will later become. The outer cells will form the placenta and the inner layers will form the fetus. Later the zygote becomes a blastocyst.

Embryonic stage

When thinking about the stages of prenatal development pregnancy you should know that this stage starts during the third week and this is the time when the embryo becomes the beginning of a human being. During the embryonic stage the cells start to divide into three parts and all of them will become a distinct system.

At this stage of prenatal pregnant development the neural tube of the baby forms. Then the head starts to develop along with the nose, eyes, mouth and ears. The cardiovascular system is the first one to develop and the blood vessel that will later become the heart starts to pulsate.

Fetal stage

This 3^rd stage starts when the cell division is completed. The stage starts during the 9^th week of pregnancy and it lasts until childbirth. The neural tube becomes the brain and the spinal cord is also formed. This is the time when the sex organs start to show.

This is the prenatal pregnancy development stage during which the baby changes the most. By the end of the third month all the body parts will be formed. In the second trimester the heartbeat speeds up and the hair, fingernails, eyelashes and toenails start forming.

It is no wonder that the stages of prenatal development pregnancy seem to be interesting for women. These mark the most important milestones of the baby’s development and they offer the guidelines to help you monitor the development of the baby.