The factory is silent. Its assembly line stands motionless. Somewhere off in the darkness, a buzzer sounds. One by one, lights begin to flicker and illuminate on long-unmanned diagnostic panels, giving a sense of enormity and complexity and scale to the machinery. The low hum of power supplies warming up comes next, followed by the higher and louder whine of turbines and electric motors. A whistle sounds, and one by one, employees begin to file in and take their places at the controls. Purposed for a single task, whose time has now come, the factory slowly comes to life...

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Welcome to Week 5!


According to babycenter.com, my now sesame seed sized baby looks like this:


The neural tube will make the spinal cord, nerves and brain. (More folic acid, pls!) That's all happening in the top layer, the ectoderm. (The ectoderm will also become skin, hair, nails, mammary and sweat glands, and tooth enamel.)

In the mesoderm, the heart and circulatory system are beginning to form, and in fact, this week, a tiny heart begins to divide into chambers and beat and pump blood.

The innermost layer, or endoderm, is working on making all kinds of other organs.

The most amazing part of all this to me is that I'm not actively DOING anything to make all that happen! There it goes, all by itself. All I have to do is eat and sleep and go about my business. I guess I'm actively *not* doing things like drinking or eating crap foods and that's probably helping to have things come out okay at the end. But really I'm about as active as an oyster making a pearl...
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousJune 22, 2008 at 5:25 PM

    Isn't is amazing how something SO small yet can make you SO sick!!! lol. Well at least I hope you're not getting too sick, but if you do the dr's have great drugs to combat that!!! Hope you're doing good!!

    ReplyDelete

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