This Week in the Womb: 32 Weeks Pregnant

Baby at 32 Weeks -- Courtesy of Babycenter.com

32 Weeks, 1 day pregnant

This week, we’ve reached 32 weeks in our gestation period — 8 months! Fewer than two months until the expected due date, but in just two weeks, our doctor says our baby has as good a chance as a full-term baby for health and survival. Now that Awesome is going through a growth spurt, my belly is really starting to stretch! I haven’t run into any stretch marks yet, but I won’t be surprised if they start popping up.

At this week’s doctor appointment, my belly measured at 32 centimeters (keeping with my run of consistency of weeks to centimeters), and baby’s heartbeat was 145. This is a little higher than usual, but in the middle as far as fetal heartrates go for this age. While we were listening, it did take a dramatic decrease, which made the doctor (a new one, who we hadn’t met before) say, ‘oh, must be a boy!’ But, I think maybe Awesome was just napping and we caught him/her by surprise.

This is what’s going on with Awesome this week:

• He/she weighs about 3.75 pounds and measures about 16.7 inches
• Awesome will be gaining about a half pound a week from here on out (a third of his/her birth weight!)
• Awesome now has finger nails, toe nails and hair (or at least “respectable peach fuzz” according to babycenter.com
• Awesome’s skin is becoming soft and smooth now that he/she’s filling out with fat
• Awesome’s incubator has had her blood volume increase 40 to 50 percent from where it was originally — that’s amazing!

Here is this week’s Belly Picture! And YUP … That’s my belly button.

32 Weeks Pregnant