My fetus is the size of a turnip, how about yours?

One of the many bizarre things I’ve learned since becoming pregnant is that while tumors get compared to various balls (“he finally got it removed—they say it was the size of a bocce ball”) fetuses get compared to fruits and vegetables (“it’s the length of a leek—aww!”)

This poses a problem for people like me, who regularly eat only about ten different kinds of fruits or veggies. Tell me something is the size of a tomato and I’ll ask “cherry, roma, beefsteak, or heirloom?” But tell me something is the size of a rutabaga and I’ll ask “what the fuck is a rutabaga?” Babycenter, which I like well enough for many of my looking-up-weird-pregnancy-shit-in-the-middle-of-the-night needs, is clearly taunting me in this regard. At various points in pregnancy my fetus has been or will be the size of a kumquat, a fig, a spaghetti squash, an “English hothouse cucumber”—as opposed to any other kind of cucumber—, a Chinese cabbage, a stalk of Swiss chard, something called a “jicama,” and the aforementioned turnip, rutabaga, and leek. I’m not ashamed to say that I cannot visualize any of these ridiculous so-called foods.

So without further ado, I present fetal sizes compared to objects I actually can visualize. I’m leaving the first two, because even those of us who shun fruits and vegetables encounter seeds on our bagels. (And I’m only doing fetal lengths, not weights.)

4 weeks: the size of a poppyseed

So many fetuses.