Pregnancy milestones in car parts

One Nissan employee has taken an unlikely approach to documenting her pregnancy journey, ditching grapes and oranges as milestone growth indicators, for actual vehicle indicators. 

Inspiration for Kayla Kilgore, a body systems design engineer at Nissan in the USA, to document her pregnancy in the unique way came from her passion for all things auto.

Instead of fruits or household objects, Kilgore headed to her garage and used parts of her and her husband’s project cars – a Nissan 370Z and R32 Skyline – to record the size of the couple's growing baby.

The couple, who met at a car show in 2017, spent nine months choosing car parts to correspond with the size of their growing baby, starting with a tyre valve cap at six weeks.

By 14 weeks, the baby had grown the size of a petrol cap on a Skyline, then a Nissan 370Z turn signal by 15 weeks.

At 22 weeks, Kilgore was carrying a brake pad-sized baby, and by week 24, a 370Z-sized speedometer. Next, was a Skyline side mirror (24 weeks), followed by a Nissan Armada (or Patrol) head rest at 31 weeks.

“We would always try to find the part ourselves. All of our friends and family were looking forward to it and asking ‘What’s this week’s car part?’” said Kilgore.

“When you look back and see the different sizes of the parts, you’re amazed. You think ‘How did this even happen?” she said.

In case you were wondering, the couple didn’t continue the trend by naming their child something car-related, and baby Landon was born in November 2023.

Shame… Prince or Cedric each has a nice old-school Nissan ring to it…