Your Baby is Most Certainly the Size of

Some Kind of Fruit

Weeks 1-4

During the first four weeks of gestation, your baby is too small to have a produce equivalent and therefore too small to be worth mentioning.

Week 5

By the time you are five weeks pregnant, your baby is the size of an apple seed. It is not the size of a fruit, but the size of a fruit’s baby. This is adorable, and more importantly, it is precise.

Week 6

Your baby could best be described as a sweet pea. This is not just because “my little sweet pea” sounds so much better than “my little quarter of an inch.” It is because produce is a very exact and objective form of measurement.

Week 7

All resources agree that your little one is now the size of a blueberry. It’s a good thing that blueberries exist because if they didn’t, there would be no way to describe your baby. You would simply have to wait until Week 8.

Week 8

Your baby is the size of a raspberry. This may make you want to blow raspberries to it through your tummy, but much like an actual raspberry, your baby would not be able to hear them.

Week 9

Your baby may be the size of an olive, a cherry, or grape. Please rest assured that if your baby is a grape, it is not that one little runt grape that always tastes funny. It is a perfectly normal grape in both size and taste.

Week 10

Your baby is the size of a kumquat. If you have trouble picturing a kumquat, your baby could also be the size of a prune. If you have trouble picturing a prune, you do not expose yourself to enough new experiences, and you probably don’t eat enough fruit.

Week 11

Fig or lime. Unlike the limes Amy took to school in Little Women, this one is safely stored in your tummy and no teacher can throw it out into the snow.

Week 12

This week, your baby could be the size of a passionfruit, clementine, or plum. Not just any plum of course. The idyllic, juicy kind of plum you could have eaten if William Carlos Williams had left some for you in the icebox. Any other kind of plum is a travesty and nothing to compare your baby to.

Week 13

Your baby is now the size of a peach. If it were sitting in a bin at the grocery store, it might have its own price tag.

Week 14

Your baby can best be visualized as a lemon or a nectarine. “But wait,” you say, “Just last week, my baby was a peach. Aren’t a peach and a nectarine basically the same size? And aren’t some lemons smaller than some peaches?” It’s true. Some peaches are the same size as some nectarines, and some lemons are smaller than some peaches. But your baby is not just any peach, nectarine, or lemon. Last week, it was the type of peach that is smaller than the type of nectarine and lemon it is this week.

Week 15

Apple or naval orange. Your baby is exactly the perfect round sphere that it should be.

Week 16

Avocado. Not that weird-shaped kind that your neighbor grows in his backyard, the standard store-bought variety.

Week 17

Your baby is the size of a pear or onion. It does not matter that there are many different types of both pears and onions. Your baby is the kind of pear or onion that would be the right size for Week 17. That should help you somewhat.

Week 18

At this point, your baby is the size of either a sweet potato or a bell pepper. Length and girth are determined by genetics, so you will need to take an honest look at yourself and your partner to know which one accurately represents your baby.

Week 19

If you’re wondering about your baby this week, you should know that it is the size of a mango or an heirloom tomato. Heirloom tomatoes, like most tomatoes, are always all the same size.

Week 20

Banana-size is the only possible way to describe your baby right now.

Week 21

This week, your baby is the size of a carrot or a pomegranate. Recall the discussion of length and girth from Week 18.

Week 22

If people are starting to ask about the size of your baby, you should inform them that your baby is, scientifically speaking, the size of a nice, ripe papaya or a hearty spaghetti squash. This should sufficiently satisfy their curiosity without abandoning convention.

Week 23

Your baby is the size of an eggplant. It could also be described as a large mango. This is not the regular small type of mango that your baby was back in Week 19. Oh God, I certainly hope you weren’t picturing a large mango back then. The normal type of mango is much smaller.

Week 24

Most resources will agree that your baby is now the size of an ear of corn. Do not attempt to visualize this by swaddling an actual ear of corn. In doing so, you will take the first step down a path of insanity from which there is no return.

Week 25

Your baby is an acorn squash, rutabaga, or cauliflower. Of course, this will already be obvious to you from the shape of your stomach.

Week 26

Scallions and turnips could both be used to describe your baby this week. If the difference seems trivial to you, you should familiarize yourself with the current literature on bulb versus root vegetable outcome. These early disparities can have lifelong effects.

Week 27

Your baby is now the size of a rutabaga or cauliflower. I hear you questioning their reappearance on the list. Do not worry. The center holds. What seems to be a chaotic mess of subjective proportions is more orderly and logical than you are capable of perceiving.

Week 28

Some resources will say that your baby is the size of an eggplant. Again, this is not the type of eggplant that described your baby in Week 23. It’s the other one. To avoid this confusion, some resources will describe your baby using the much more familiar kabocha squash.

Week 29

Butternut squash or acorn squash. These are exactly the same in size and shape.

Week 30

Your baby could be a large cabbage or cucumber. If cucumber seems like a downgrade from butternut squash, you should find a better cucumber supplier.

Week 31

The size of your baby could be equally described as a coconut or pineapple. For comfort’s sake though, I hope yours is the coconut.

Week 32

Resources disagree this week, but your baby is probably the size of a Napa cabbage, jimica, or squash. Since we have already established that all squash are the same, there is no need to specify the type.

Week 33

Pineapple or durian. If the only durian you know is the one from Portlandia, do not worry. Your baby is not an alien. It is a run-of-the-mill, commonplace piece of fruit.

Week 34

Your baby is the size of cantaloupe. This would be the whole fruit size, not the sliced pieces you are accustomed to getting at brunch.

Week 35

Honeydew. I think we can all agree that melons provide measurement to a degree the metric system is simply incapable of.

Week 36

You will be thrilled to learn that your baby now measures the same as a head of Romaine lettuce.

Week 37

Swiss chard or winter melon. Just like the ones in your fridge.

Week 38

Your baby is now the size of a leek or a stalk of rhubarb. Knowing this should help bring out your nurturing instinct.

Week 39

At one week away from full term, your baby is the size of a mini watermelon or small pumpkin. This is not the size of pumpkin that you could mistake for the Great Pumpkin. This is the size of pumpkin that you end up settling for when you calculate the per pound fee at the pumpkin patch.

Week 40

By this point (and beyond) your baby may grow to be a full-size watermelon, or a pumpkin of a somewhat more satisfying weight.

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NOTE: As you cherish each week of pregnancy, it is important to remember that your diet should not consist solely of the type of fruit that your baby is currently being measured in. Resources like this one are written by experts of measurement only, not nutrition. Please consult your doctor for all dietary advice.