What to expect when you're expecting (109 page)

Week 28
This week, your amazing baby has reached 2½ pounds and may be almost 16 inches long. Baby’s skill of the week: blinking. Yes, along with the other tricks in a growing repertoire that already includes coughing, sucking, hiccupping, and taking practice breaths, your baby can now blink those sweet little eyes. Dreaming about your baby? Baby may be dreaming about you, too, courtesy of the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep he or she has started getting. But this little dreamer isn’t ready for birth day just yet. Though his or her lungs
are nearly fully mature by now (making it easier for your baby—and you—to breathe a little easier if he or she were born now), your baby still has a lot of growing to do.

Your Baby, Month 7

Week 29
Your baby can be as tall as 17 inches now and can weigh nearly 3 pounds. Though already coming pretty close (within 3 inches or so) of his or her ultimate birth length, baby still has lots to gain. In fact, over the next 11 weeks, your baby more than doubles—and may even come close to tripling—his or her weight. Much of that weight will come from the fat accumulating under his or her skin right now. And as your baby plumps up, the room in your womb will start to feel a little cramped, making it less likely that you’ll feel hard kicks from your little one, and more likely that you’ll be feeling jabs and pokes from elbows and knees.

Week 30
What’s 17 inches long, just over 3 pounds in weight, and cute all over? It’s your baby—and he or she is getting bigger by the day (in case you couldn’t tell from the size of your belly). Also getting bigger daily is baby’s brain, which is preparing for life outside the womb—and for a lifetime of learning. Starting this week, your baby’s brain is starting to look like one, taking on those characteristic grooves and indentations. These wrinkles allow for future expansion of brain tissue that is crucial as your baby goes from helpless newborn to responsive infant to verbal toddler to curious preschooler and beyond. Your baby’s bigger and better brain is also starting to take on tasks previously delegated to other parts of the body, like temperature regulation. Now that the brain is capable of turning up the heat (with the help of that growing supply of baby fat), your baby will start shedding lanugo, the downy, soft body hair that has been keeping him or her warm up to this point. Which means that by the time your baby is born, he or she probably won’t be fuzzy wuzzy anymore.

Week 31
Though your baby still has 3 to 5 pounds more to gain before delivery, he or she is weighing in at an impressive 3-plus pounds this week. And at 18 inches long (give or take a couple because fetuses this age come in all sizes), your baby is quickly approaching his or her birth length. Also developing at an impressive clip these days: your baby’s brain connections (baby has to make trillions of them). And he or she is able to put that complex web of brain connections to good use, too—already processing information, tracking light, and perceiving signals from all five senses. Your brainy baby is also a sleepy one, putting in longer stretches of snooze time, specifically in REM sleep—which is why you’re probably noticing more defined patterns of awake (and kicking) and sleeping (quiet) times from your little one.

Baby Brain Food

Have you been feeding your baby’s brain? Getting enough of those fabulous fats, the omega-3’s, is more important than ever in the third trimester when your baby’s brain development is being fast-tracked. See
page 101
for all the good-fat facts.

As always, remember that every pregnancy and every woman is different. You may experience all of these symptoms at one time or another, or only a few of them. Some may have continued from last month, others may be new. Still others may hardly be noticed because you’ve become so used to them. You may also have other, less common, symptoms. Here’s what you might experience this month:

A Look Inside

At the beginning of this month, your uterus is approximately 11 inches from the top of your pubic bone. By the end of the month, your baby’s home has grown another inch in height and can be felt around 4½ inches above your belly button. You may think that there’s no more room for your womb to grow (it seems to have already filled up your abdomen), but you still have 8 to 10 more weeks of expansion ahead of you!

Physically

Stronger and more frequent fetal activity

Increasing vaginal discharge

Achiness in the lower abdomen or along the sides

Constipation

Heartburn, indigestion, flatulence, bloating

Occasional headaches, faintness, or dizziness

Nasal congestion and occasional nosebleeds; ear stuffiness

Sensitive gums that may bleed when you brush