week 31

etal development in pregnancy week 31

~length
16 in | 41 cm

~weight
3.3 lbs | 1.5 kg

This week, your amazing growing baby is around 3 pounds and 17 inches tall.
With each added layer of baby fat, your baby's wrinkly raisin skin starts to look more and more like it will when they're born.
The heavy news: you can expect your miracle-gro muffin to gain about a half a pound of weight per week from now until about two weeks before birth.
Your baby's developing immune system has made some serious gains over the past weeks getting them in full gear to face our disease-ridden world o’ wonders.
Even so, a large majority of your child’s immune strength will need to come from your milk in the first year.
Their cute little noggin’ (which could already be covered with luscious locks or just purty peach fuzz), is still soft because the skull bones have not yet fused together.
As disturbing as having an infant with a soft cracked skull sounds, it's pretty much a necessity for passage through the birth canal during labor.
If your baby is in your birth canal for an extended period, they'll come out with a bit of a cone head, as a result of their skull plates being compressed while in your rather snug birth canal. It's normal, harmless and their skull will even out into a more round, less cone-heady shape in the next few weeks.
Oh, and FYI: your baby may have that “soft spot” on their head for up to eighteen months after birth.

Jordan and Dorothy at New Belguim

the Faerie garden continues

week 24

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!