Your week 6 guide

Cardiac activity may be visible on an ultrasound around now, depending on your exact dates and the equipment used. What is seen is a flickering pulse in a simple tube of tissue rather than a fully formed heart with chambers and valves. If a very early scan does not pick it up, that is often about dating rather than a problem, and your team may simply repeat the scan in a week or so.

Small buds appear on the sides of the embryo where arms and legs will grow. They look like paddles at this stage, with no distinction yet between an arm and a hand. Over the coming weeks they lengthen, then divide into upper arm, forearm and hand, and the same sequence repeats in the legs.

The digestive and respiratory tracts are beginning to separate from a single early tube. One channel will become the airway and lungs and the other the oesophagus and gut, and getting that division right is a delicate piece of construction. Both remain very immature; the lungs in particular will not be able to do their real work for many months yet.

Nausea, food aversions, tender breasts, bloating and heavy tiredness are all common now. Pregnancy sickness has almost nothing to do with mornings and can settle in at any hour, and aversions can turn a food you have always loved into something you cannot be in the same room as. None of this means you are unwell or coping badly, though it can be genuinely miserable to live with.

Hormonal shifts can make your moods swing further and faster than usual. Feeling tearful, irritable or oddly flat in a wanted pregnancy is common and does not make you ungrateful. If low mood or anxiety is persistent rather than passing, tell your midwife, because support in pregnancy is available and works better the earlier it starts.

Your abdomen will not look pregnant yet, and may look bloated instead. The uterus is roughly the size of a plum at six weeks, so any change in how your waistband fits is digestion rather than the baby. Many women find this stage the hardest to explain to people, feeling profoundly different while looking entirely unchanged.

Arrange antenatal care now if you have not already made the call. Early booking is what opens the door to first-trimester screening, early blood tests and, where relevant, extra support for an existing health condition. If you have rung and heard nothing back, chase it rather than assuming you are in the system.

Go through foods, drinks, medicines and activities with your care team in one conversation rather than researching each in isolation. Online advice on pregnancy is contradictory and often written for a different country's guidance, which is a reliable recipe for anxiety. Your midwife can tell you which rules actually apply where you live.

If nausea allows, try eating small amounts regularly and sipping fluids through the day. An empty stomach tends to make sickness worse, so something dry before you get up can take the edge off the first hour. If it does not help, let it go; this is a suggestion to try, not a standard to meet. Alhamdulillah for a small comfort, even when it is simply a food you can face.

Eating with nausea: Pregnancy sickness can happen at any time of day. Many women find small amounts eaten often are easier to tolerate than full meals.

Plain, starchy foods such as bread, rice, oats, potatoes, pasta or crackers are often the easiest to manage. Choose whichever safe foods you can actually keep down rather than forcing yourself through foods that make the nausea worse; a narrow diet for a few weeks is not a disaster.