"Fundus"

As first time parents to be, we are immersed in books describing every single day of pregnancy to follow the development of our bean child. This has been extremely educational. Not only we are discovering a whole new universe within Aylin's body, at least I am, our vocabulary is also expanding. So is Aylin's belly but that's another story. I'll just say that apparently it was not the bananas foster.

At 9 weeks old Ember the Embryo, formerly known as Ziggy the Zygote, has grown into Fethi the Fetus. According to the books, Aylin's uterus is a little bigger than a grapefruit. Fethi is around 3 inches long and developing hands and legs. I was amazed to find out that at 9 weeks Fethi has already developed "bathroom" functions. Immediately this was a concern to me, because according to the floor plans of the uterus there are no bathrooms there.

While reading about how Aylin's body changes, we ran across a new word, "Fundus". Apparently the next checkup is going to look at the "height of the Fundus". It was a funny sounding word at first when parsed the two syllables read "Fund-Us". Was this checkup going to be about how much this child is going to cost? I was intrigued from the get go.

Thanks to Wikipedia which I think is the next best invention since the one after sliced bread, I found that "Fundus" is the Latin word for "bottom" and is commonly used anatomically as a generic term referring to the portion of an organ opposite from its opening. The fundal height of the uterus, measured from the top of the pubic bone, is used to determine growth rate of the baby. See fig. (also see, no bathrooms)

We are very anxious to find out all about Fethi the fetus and his fundus at the next checkup on the 27th of June.