14 Weeks Pregnant: The Week Your Baby Starts Making Faces

Last week, your baby's voice was taking shape. This week, it is the face's turn.

Welcome to week fourteen, deeper into that gentler second-trimester stretch. Your baby's facial muscles have developed just enough to do something new and rather wonderful. Make faces. Squint, frown, even grimace. And a first, downy coat is beginning to appear all over that tiny body. Let me show you.

Your baby is learning to make faces

This week, your baby's face comes to life.

Until now, that little face has been still, a work in progress. But the facial muscles have wired up enough that your baby can suddenly move it. The first small movements appear. A squint. A frown. The furrow of a tiny brow. The mouth stretching slowly open.

No one taught your baby any of this. They are simple, single movements at first, fleeting and uncombined. But over the months ahead they will grow and gather into the real, recognisable expressions of a human face, the very same face you will one day spend years learning to read by heart. The crumple that comes a half-second before a cry. The deep frown of fierce concentration over a first puzzle. The scrunch of a proper belly laugh. It all begins here, with a single squint in the dark.

I should be honest with you, because I always am. A real smile, the kind that breaks across your baby's face because you have just walked into the room, does not come until a month or two after birth, and it is worth every second of the wait. But the muscles that will one day make it are awake this week, rehearsing in the dark, getting ready for you.

A first, downy coat

At the same time, something tender is happening to your baby's skin.

A fine, soft, downy hair called lanugo is beginning to appear, and over the coming weeks it will spread to cover your baby almost completely, a delicate first coat. It helps keep your baby warm, and works alongside a creamy protective layer that arrives later to look after that paper-thin skin in its watery world.

Most of it will quietly shed again before your baby is born, though some babies, especially those who arrive a little early, are still wearing wisps of it at birth, on the shoulders, the back, the tips of the ears. If yours is, do take a gentle look. It is the very first hair your baby ever grew.

Learning to suck

Your baby's hands are beginning to work too, drifting up toward the face, and this week your baby may start making little sucking motions with its mouth.

It is practising, once again, for something that matters enormously. Long before there is any milk, your baby is rehearsing the exact motion that will one day let it feed, cheek warm against you, in the quiet of those first nights. The movements are still jerky and reflexive for now, growing more coordinated by the week, and all of it remains far too deep and gentle for you to feel yet.

How big is my baby at 14 weeks?

Around eight and a half centimetres now, head to bottom, and about forty-five grams. Your baby's neck is more defined, the head sits more upright, and the arms have grown long enough to look almost in proportion with the body at last.

Still small, still light, but looking more and more like a person you are going to meet.

What is happening in my body?

This is often the week the secret starts to show.

Many women notice the very first curve of a bump around now, that little turn-to-the-side-in-the-mirror moment. With the nausea fading and a welcome surge of energy arriving, a lot of women say this is when they finally start to feel pregnant in the good way, rather than simply unwell.

You might also notice some new and completely normal changes. A faint dark line appearing down the centre of your belly, called the linea nigra. A darkening of the skin around your nipples. Or a sharp little tug low on one side as you stand or turn, which is usually round ligament pain, your growing womb stretching its supports. All of it is your body adapting, beautifully, to the work it is doing.

From Courtney. Week fourteen is when it often starts to feel real in a whole new way. The bump that only you knew about begins, quietly, to announce itself. Strangers have no idea yet, but you catch yourself sideways in the mirror and there it is, the gentle proof. I always loved this stretch, when the sickness finally let go and I felt like myself again, only now carrying the most wonderful secret. And knowing, this week, that the little face in there was busy frowning and squinting and practising, getting ready for all the expressions we would one day share, used to undo me in the very best way. Enjoy feeling good, mama. You have more than earned this lighter chapter.

The one thing to do this week

Keep your prenatal or folate going, steady as ever.

And with your energy returning, this is a lovely week to do one practical, kind thing for the months ahead. Maybe that is finally finding some clothes that fit the new you comfortably. Maybe it is a gentle bit of movement that feels good in your body. Maybe it is simply saying the words out loud to someone you have been waiting to tell. Whatever helps you settle into this, do that.

Coming up in week fifteen

Next week, your baby's movements gain something new. Purpose. After weeks of random twitches and jerks, your baby begins to reach with what looks like real intention, the hand slowing as it nears its target. The skeleton hardens enough to show on an X-ray, the legs grow longer than the arms, and the body keeps catching up.

Week fifteen is where your baby starts to move on purpose. I will see you there.

Written by Courtney Garland, NICU nurse, lactation consultant and mother of four, and founder of The Mama Years. This is here to inform and reassure you. It is not a substitute for medical advice, so always follow the guidance of your own doctor or midwife.

The Mama Years. 2026.

References

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. (n.d.). Changes during pregnancy. https://www.acog.org/womens-health/infographics/changes-during-pregnancy

Cleveland Clinic. (2023). Fetal development: Stages of growth. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/7247-fetal-development-stages-of-growth

Mayo Clinic. (2025). Fetal development: The second trimester. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-by-week/in-depth/fetal-development/art-20046151

Merck Manual. (2024). Stages of fetal development (Consumer Version). https://www.merckmanuals.com/home/women-s-health-issues/normal-pregnancy/stages-of-fetal-development

The Mama Years is written by Courtney Garland, a NICU registered nurse and IBCLC lactation consultant, against the research. When the science is genuinely unsettled, she says so instead of guessing. Nothing here replaces the advice of the clinician looking after you.