If you’ve been feeling weird little fluttering butterflies in your belly, it’s not just your run-of-the-mill pre-birth performance anxiety.
Actually, it's your amazing baby with a case of the hiccups: a fairly common occurrence at this point, due to them practicing breathing for their big birthday.
In addition to getting a round of butterfly-like hiccups, your little swimmer has arduously managed to accumulate enough baby fat to account for nearly 3.5% of their overall body weight.
Yeah, compared to we lardy adults, it’s not very impressive, but considering they used to have NO fat, it’s certainly a healthy (and body-warming) accomplishment in its way.
Another fantastic life-critical accomplishment: your baby's spleen is now in charge of hematopoiesis — the 10 dollar name for the process involved in building up certain important blood components.
Week 24 : Breathe baby breathe!
It's another week full of exciting developments for your magical growing baby!
Just take a look at the checklist for this week:
1) ears: done;
2) fingernails: done;
3) (if you have a boy) testicles: taking their 3-4 day trip from the abdominal wall to the scrotum; and
4) lungs walls: secreting “surfactant”.
What’s surfactant? It's basically what it sounds like: a surface-activated fat that helps your baby's little lungs inflate (where inflate = fill with air not get more expensive for no understandable reason).
In the meantime, your submerged baby is still breathing in their amniotic fluid (and a bit of pee), preparing and rehearsing their lungs for an oxygen-filled life outside the womb.
By the end of this week, your wee womb-squatter will be weighing in at a whopping 2 lbs and 14 inches long.
All this new weight means your tiny baby is actually starting to fill out their skin, but they're not anywhere near their adorable fat-baby potential.
Most of the fetal “filling out” is coming up in that long awaited (and slightly dreaded?) third trimester. Woo-hoo! Get ready!
And how's mom doing?
Your little one is moving (spinning, kicking, pirouetting, shimmying, and maybe even doing a bit of the Can-Can) so much these days that if you invite your friends and/or family to touch your belly there’s a good chance they’ll get a milder sample of what you’ve been experiencing.
You may be feeling as if you've got a sign on your forehead that says, "Please touch my belly and ask how far along I am right now!"
For some obnoxious-yet-confusing reason, a visibly pregnant belly is often treated as public property and a silent invitation for belly touching.
We recommend taking the belly-touching calmly and if it really offends you, just say something like: “I just fell in a large vat of anthrax.” Or perhaps something a little less aggressive, like, “Please, at the very least, ask me before touching my body.”
There are of course many women who enjoy sharing this touching ritual with others. Find your comfort zone and good luck with the rest.
Pre-eclampsia
The danger of getting pre-eclampsia (a.k.a. Toxemia) during pregnancy is significantly higher for women who're inactive, overweight and/or suffer from past issues with blood pressure.
Pre-eclampsia is characterized by significant swelling of the hands and face, excessive weight gain, blurry vision with severe headaches or abdominal pain.
We're not talking a little bit of swelling in the feet, but ALL over - aka edema. Sudden ongoing swelling to the hands and face and/or blurry vision should be reported immediately to your medical caregiver.
Pre-eclampsia can be diagnosed by high blood pressure and the presence of certain proteins in your urine. Again, high blood pressure alone does not mean you are affected, but is cause enough for you to clean up your diet (one of the theorized causes) and attempt to be more active, which'll increase your heart's strength and capacity to pump blood.
Why you don't want it: Pre-eclampsia can prevent the placenta from receiving enough blood, thus depriving your baby of essential nutrients and lowering oxygen levels, both of which cause low birth weights and other related issues.
If you do have pre-eclampsia, you'll probably be put on bed-rest, which is not something anyone wants for the final trimester of their pregnancy.
