At 22 weeks pregnant, your baby is roughly the length of a spaghetti squash or papaya, measuring about 27 to 28 centimeters (nearly 11 inches) from head to heel and weighing around 430 grams, or just under a pound. That’s a significant jump from just a few weeks earlier, as the second trimester is a period of rapid growth in both length and weight.
Size and Weight at 22 Weeks
The most common way to measure a fetus changes as pregnancy progresses. Earlier in pregnancy, doctors use “crown-to-rump” length (head to bottom) because the legs are curled up. By the second trimester, the full crown-to-heel measurement becomes more useful. At 22 weeks, that head-to-heel length is approximately 27 to 28 centimeters, or about 10.5 to 11 inches.
Weight at this stage is roughly 430 grams, which is just under one pound. To put that in perspective, it’s about the weight of a can of soup. From here, your baby will gain weight quickly, roughly doubling in the next five to six weeks.
What Your Baby Looks Like Right Now
At 22 weeks, the skin is thin, wrinkled, and somewhat see-through, with a pinkish or reddish tint from blood vessels visible beneath the surface. A greasy, protective coating called vernix caseosa covers the skin, shielding it from the amniotic fluid. Fine, downy hair called lanugo covers the body and helps that protective coating stay in place. The features are becoming more defined: eyelids, eyebrows, and fingernails are forming, and the face looks increasingly like a newborn’s, though the body is still very lean with little fat stored yet.
Key Developments Happening This Week
The lungs are in the middle of a critical growth phase called the canalicular stage, which spans roughly weeks 16 through 26. During this period, the earliest air-blood barriers form inside the lungs, and the tissue begins producing small amounts of surfactant, a substance that will eventually allow the air sacs to inflate and stay open. The lungs are far from ready to breathe air independently, but the groundwork is being laid.
Hearing is just beginning to come online. Initial responsiveness to sound starts around 23 weeks, with startle responses to vibration and loud noise appearing around 24 weeks. At 22 weeks, the structures of the inner ear are maturing rapidly, but consistent responses to external sounds won’t happen for several more weeks. By 28 to 30 weeks, all fetuses reliably respond to sound stimulation. So while your baby can’t quite hear your voice clearly at 22 weeks, that ability is days to weeks away.
Movement at 22 Weeks
If this is your first pregnancy, 22 weeks is right around the time many people start feeling unmistakable movement. You may have noticed flutters or bubbling sensations earlier (sometimes called quickening), but by now, those sensations are becoming more distinct: small kicks, rolls, and jabs that you can clearly identify as your baby moving. People who have been pregnant before often recognize these movements a few weeks earlier.
At this stage, your baby is still small enough to move freely in the amniotic fluid, so you might feel activity in different spots throughout the day. Formal kick counting isn’t typically recommended until the third trimester, around 28 weeks, when movement patterns become more predictable. For now, simply noticing that you feel some movement each day is a good sign.
How Your Body Is Changing
Your uterus has grown well above your belly button by 22 weeks. A measurement called fundal height, the distance from your pubic bone to the top of the uterus, roughly matches your week of pregnancy after 20 weeks. So at 22 weeks, your fundal height is typically around 22 centimeters, or about 8.5 inches. Your healthcare provider may start measuring this at your prenatal visits as a simple check on your baby’s growth.
Viability at 22 Weeks
Twenty-two weeks is widely considered the earliest edge of viability, the point at which survival outside the womb becomes possible with intensive medical care. Data from the American Academy of Pediatrics covering 2020 to 2022 found that among all infants born at 22 weeks, about 25% survived. Among those who received active life support after birth, the survival rate was higher, around 35%. However, survival without severe complications was much lower, at roughly 6%.
These numbers reflect care at specialized neonatal intensive care units. Outcomes vary significantly depending on the hospital, the baby’s specific condition at birth, and whether the medical team and parents pursue active intervention. Each additional week in the womb dramatically improves the odds: survival at 25 weeks, for example, reaches about 82% among infants receiving active care.