Today is the last day of the first trimester of our pregnancy. I asked Agnes why a pregnancy is split into trimesters (as opposed to halves, quarters, or whatever). Agnes said that the first trimester is really about embryogenesis. Within the first trimester, we should be referring to them as embryos and all of the body parts are still being created. After this point, we can now refer to them as fetuses and the remainder of the time will be spent in further development and maturation of all of parts of the body. I guess that this means that they should have hearts, lungs, digestive systems, livers, etc., though they would all be pretty undeveloped.

The second trimester is supposed to also be marked with a big improvement in a lot of the symptoms normally associated with pregnancy. Nausea is suppose to be reduced or maybe even go away. One’s energy is supposed to come back. Of course not every pregnancy will follow the same exact pattern, but I think it’ll be nice if Agnes feels better in the coming weeks.

It’s during the second trimester that one can determine the sex of the fetus. That should happen at around the 18 week mark. We’ve decided that we do want to know the sex of the twins. Before we knew we had twins, we said it would be a nice harmless surprise to not know the sex of our child until it’s born, but with twins, we just need to be as prepared as we can.

It’s also at the 18 week mark that Agnes might start to feel movement from the twins. I’m sure that’s going to be exciting.