Baby’s Development
Waiting patiently for the right time to make his appearance, your baby is still gaining weight. At thirty-four weeks gestation, your fetus weighs at least 4.7 pounds and will continue to ‘pack it on’ for the rest of your pregnancy. This fat is essential to help your baby regulate his body temperature once outside of you and helps control his metabolism. Your little one may not get the hang of breast- or bottle-feeding from the start and these fat stores will sustain him well throughout his learning process. Importance aside, this fat is also essential for the cute dimples he’s currently cultivating on his elbows and knees!
Your little one has a strong grip already! After weeks and months of opening and closing his fist or grappling with the umbilical cord, his tiny fingers are strong enough to grasp your finger or other objects easily.
Your Body and Emotions
Your mood swings will probably increase at this point. You may feel like you’re dealing with multiple personalities as you go between excited, afraid, angry or sad. You’ll probably be crying at long distance commercials and/or furious that your partner left some crumbs on the coffee table. Again, just try to ride it out. Most of it is your hormones and the rest can be attributed to the approach of perhaps the biggest lifestyle change of them all.
If the prospect of labor is starting to frighten you, consider talking to mothers who have already experienced it. Ask for their honesty and accept it when they give it to you. Too many women try to protect future moms by downplaying the intensity of labor. You’ll be able to see ‘the look’ in their eyes when you ask if it hurts…Ask them how they managed the pain, research labor and the medications used on line and then develop your birth plan. It’s good to have some feeling of control at this point, and having a clear idea of how you want your labor to progress, who you want with you and where you want to have it can help calm some of your fears.
Obsessively cleaning? Welcome to the nesting urge. This is a primal instinct that takes over during these last few weeks. You may find yourself organizing all your old papers, putting everything in jars and even going slightly mad with a labeling machine. On one hand, your need for control when faced with delivery and motherhood is to blame but scientists also believe that it’s an urge shared by all females in the animal kingdom. Don’t question it if it brings you relief. Your bathtub may never be cleaner!!
Dad’s Tips
As she gets closer to giving birth, your partner’s brain may seem to have taken a holiday. The hormone surge in her system is probably causing a phenomenon known colloquially as ‘pregnancy brain’. In the past she may have been the one to know where everything in the house is, organized bill payments or your social schedule. Now that childbirth and the hormone soup in her system has taken over, she may be considerably more absent minded than usual. Be patient and try to look at the big picture. Would you know where the car keys were if you were about to push a living human being out of your privates? Would you remember to pay the credit card bills if you were lugging around thirty-five pounds of baby weight? Be comforted knowing that you’ll have your partner back one day and until that point, it might do you good to start keeping track of these tiny details.
