Finally, I am stepping into week 18. I realised that recently i kept telling friends that time can be either whizzing past or crawling by for me. Friends asked "How many weeks are you now?" "I'm in week 17""Wow! Almost half way to go. Great! Time flies~"
"Oh yeah? Yeah...well, time flies." Time does fly when there are only 2 weeks to go to mark the half way of the 40 weeks journey. But when my mind flashed back to few months ago, "what!? Not even reaching half way yet? oh man~Time crawls la..."
I dont know. My thoughts just contradict among themselves sometimes. It has been 2 weeks since i last saw ah B on ultrasound monitor screen. I wish i could have u/s every day to know how he/she is doing inside. I miss ah B. He/she is so near yet so far...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Baby should be about 15.24cm by now. Last measured, ah B was 11.05cm. Quite a remarkable growth in length hey! And weight? Should reach about 200g. I forgot to ask gynae to weigh my baby for me as i was too excited everytime i lie on the bed looking at the monitor til i forgot everything single thing that i had in my mind. =_="
Baby has, now, two layers of the epidermis and the dermis underneath the surface skin. The skin is now fully covered in a kind of wax and in medical term it is vernix caseosa and looks something like this:
I know..it looks YUCKS!!! *Imagining myself covered in a layer of room-temperatured white subtance oil...=/ eww~~~Greasy, waxy, cheese-like substance are how it feels like! I know it sounds nasty but it does the baby good for goodness sake. This fatty secretions is covering the baby from head to toe to cover their extreme thin skin from bruising and abrasions as well as chapping since they stay in water for the whole 10 months. The greasy substance does something else apart from protecting the skin. You know the birthing process? The pushing part? You would thank that greasy waxy cream for smoothing the way for that watermelon to come out. If you know you're pregnant with a girl, it's a uterus within a uterus! Your little princess will have developed a uterus and vagina canal by the end of this week.
As for the mom, if you haven't seen you inn-y belly button yet, the great news is that you'll be discovering it popping out soon and stay in that way until after you've pushed your bun out from your oven. Be ready for breathing difficulty (well, not to the extreme side) since your lungs are squished by your belly and the space is getting more cramped as you can imagine. Everything else (your organs) in the mid-section is getting properly squeezed as well. Thanks to your growing (and grow and grow) belly. Be sure to eat your iron and calcium supplements, drink your pregnancy milk for mom and to continue with your folic acid (those prescribed by your gynae) daily since your body is producing more blood for both of you and your baby's bones are all in the process of hardening. Keep in mind that as more blood is being produced, it lowers your blood pressure. So standing up quickly and/or occasional speedy movements may cause slight dizziness or lightheadedness (yes! i agree to that totally!!). This is absolutely normal and it also means that preggo should stick to slow and steady movements.
Something that i didn't know: preggos at this point are producing more melanin, which cause dark patches of skin to occur on random parts of the body. These dark spots (unlike those of your parents) will retreat soon after birth (and so far, i haven't notice any on me yet and HOPEFULLY, they won't appear on me).
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Not much excitements compared to the beginnings of the pregnancy where you'd anticipate a lot of happenings on the baby. For now, the major progress of the baby is to grow in size so that the whole body grows into the right proportion with the used-to-be-enlarged-head. Gambate ah B!
