Your baby now weighs about 2 1/2 pounds (like a butternut squash) and is a tad over 15 inches long from head to heel. Her muscles and lungs are continuing to mature, and his head is growing bigger to make room for her developing brain.
I have to say this week’s description of what’s going on with the baby is a bit disappointing! The rest of the description was basically lecturing me to consume enough calcium – a totally unnecessary directive as I’ve been consuming dairy products like nobody’s business since I’ve been pregnant. I practically live on dairy. Thank God I’m not lactose intolerant.
Right now, I’d say I’m feeling pretty good. Last week (28 weeks), I said “just OK” but Thanksgiving really recharged me and made me feel much better. I did get a little alarmed last night when I found out I was the only woman in my prenatal water aerobics class experiencing Braxton-Hicks contractions. I’ve been getting them since the first trimester, and they’ve been increasing in frequency as time goes on. These days I get them several times a day every day. However, my OB (and the internet) has said not to worry unless I get them 4 times in an hour, which I don’t think has been happening, except on one occasion. However, the internets also said people don’t usually get them until 20 weeks, which was definitely not the case for me, though they’re a lot more frequent and obvious now than they were before 20 weeks.
I had an appointment with the dermatologist this morning. I go every 6 months for inspection of my multitude of moles. Anyway, for basically the first time ever, she didn’t actually remove anything, which was really nice. Yay for that.
Water aerobics was a lot of fun with my husband last night. I wish he would come every time, but he flat out refuses. 🙂 Unfortunately, he’s going out of town for a week starting Friday.
The dermatologist told me I was looking very small for how far along I am, which I think is just polite talk. (People assume any woman, even a pregnant one, likes to be told she’s small, which is not totally wrong.) However, as it happens, I’m measuring exactly on for my gestation (28 cm at 28 weeks), and my weight gain continues to be on track for me to gain 30 pounds, exactly in the middle of the recommended weight gain range given my initial weight. Despite all this, I feel large. Well, not large, but heavy. Specifically, my belly feels very heavy, and this hurts my apparently inadequate core muscles. Maybe if I’d done a million sit-ups or something before pregnancy it would hurt less?
It could be that you just also really do look small. Although I’ve never been pregnant, I do know that different women carry it differently, and even the same woman may carry her pregnancies differently. I had two friends about a month apart and one of them was absolutely huge and I never thought the other ever looked that big. Granted, some of that had to do with the baby’s size, but it seemed like that couldn’t have been all of it. But of course you’re going to feel large. From what I hear, every woman does when pregnant, regardless of how much weight she gains.