24 weeks

Week 24: Breathe baby, breathe!

Fetal development in pregnancy week 24: Fetus in sixth month This is another big week 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 that? Well, surfactant is sort of what it sounds like: a surface-activated fat whose main purpose is to assist the your baby's little lungs during inflation (as in, filling with air, not getting more expensive). Just in case you’re curious, your submerged baby is still breathing in amniotic fluid, preparing and rehearsing the lungs an oxygen-filled life outside the womb. By the end of this week, your child will be weighing around 2 lbs and 14 inches long. Your cutie-patootie may even be a little more plump, but isn't anywhere near their full baby-fatted cute-self. Most of the “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’ve may have experienced the oddity that is strangers who feel a protruding pregnant belly is 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.” Still, there are many women who enjoy sharing this touching ritual with others. Find your comfort zone and good luck with the rest.

Scary stuff you should be aware of: The danger of getting preeclampsia (a.k.a. Toxemia) during pregnancy is significantly higher and is characterized by significant swelling of the hands and face, excessive weight gain, blurry vision with severe headaches or abdominal pain. Obviously, swelling is common during pregnancy, but should be monitored closely, and sudden ongoing swelling to the hands and face could be a concern. Talk with your physician for more information. Preeclampsia can also 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 it might be something you and your physician will want to/need to monitor throughout your pregnancy. Preeclampsia can prevent the placenta from receiving enough blood, thus depriving your baby of essential nutrients and lower oxygen levels, possibly resulting in low birth weights and other problems.

There's hair EVERYWHERE!
by The Sarcastic Journalist

Pregnancy can make your body do really weird things. I won’t even go into the darker nipples or the linea negra. Instead, we’ll discuss hair.

When you think of a pregnant woman, I bet you don’t think of someone covered in hair, do you? Well, you should!

We all know that pregnancy makes the hair on your head grow faster and less of it falls out. But, did you know that the hair on your legs stops growing as fast as it did?

That’s a good thing. If you’re anything like me, you don’t have the energy to lean down and shave your legs every day. (Of course, once you have a newborn, you’ll probably go months without shaving, but that’s a different story altogether.)

Although I enjoyed having to shave my legs even less than I normally did, it seemed as if all the hair traveled from my legs up to my belly. Yes, my belly, the part of me that everyone wanted to touch. The part of me that jutted out much further than should be allowed.

Covered. In. Hair.

I’m not saying I looked like a wooly mammoth, but the amount of hair on my belly easily rivaled (or surpassed) the amount on my arms. Instead of the perfectly round, hairless bellies you see on TV or in ads, I had a big round, hairy lump with an off-center linea negra.

I’d like to believe I could have won some sort of sexy swimsuit competition with my belly, but I doubt that’d happen. That is, unless they have those sorts of things in really dark rooms.

Hehe! I just LOVE reading the sarcastic journalist =)