The Germinal Stage (Week 1-2)

Germinal Stage (Weeks 1–2)
A mother and father’s DNA is passed on to the child.It occurs when sperm swims to the egg to fertilize the egg and forms a diploid cell resulting from the fusion of two haploid gametes A zygote begins as a one-cell structure is created when a sperm and egg come together. The first week after conception, the zygote multiplies, going from a one-cell structure to two cells, then four cells, then eight cells, etc. This process of cell division is called mitosis, Mitosis is a process and only one-half of all zygotes survive the first two weeks. After 5 days of mitosis there are 100 cells, and after 9 months there are billions of individual cells. As the cells divide different organs and body parts.

Embryonic Stage (Weeks 3–8)
After the zygote divides it becomes

At about 16 weeks, the fetus is approximately 4.5 inches long and bigger than a bean and more like the size of a grapefruit. Toes and fingers are fully formed and fingerprints form on the tips of the fingers. By the time the fetus reaches the sixth month of forming, it weighs up to 1.4 pounds. Hearing has developed, so the fetus can respond to sounds, which basically mean a lot of movement in the belly of the mother. The organs, such as the lungs, heart, stomach, and intestines, have formed enough that a fetus born premature has a chance to survive outside of the mother’s womb and can form on its own . Throughout the fetal stage the brain continues to grow, nearly doubling in mass from weeks 16 to 28. Around 36 weeks, the fetus is almost ready to be born. It weighs about 6 pounds and is about 18.5 inches long and it is the size of a stack of bananas, by week 37 all of the fetus’s organ systems are formed enough that it could survive outside the mother’s uterus without many of the risks of premature birth. The fetus continues to gain weight and grow in 40 weeks. By then, the fetus has little room to move around and birth becomes