Week 36 - (Crenshaw Melon)

Can you see how the Holidays have affected me? First I was late posting about my 11th appointment last Monday and then I totally skipped over Thursday's post about week 36. So better late than never right...


Baby M is still packing on the pounds — at the rate of about an ounce a day. She now weighs almost 6 pounds (like a crenshaw melon) and is more than 18 1/2 inches long. She's shedding most of the downy covering of hair that covered her body as well as the vernix caseosa, the waxy substance that covered and protected her skin during her nine-month amniotic bath. She swallows both of these substances, along with other secretions, resulting in a blackish mixture, called meconium, will form the contents of her first bowel movement.
At the end of this week, Baby M will be considered full-term. (Full-term is 37 to 42 weeks; babies born before 37 weeks are pre-term and those born after 42 are post-term.) She's in a head-down position. But if she wasn't, my Doctor might suggest scheduling an "external cephalic version," which is a fancy way of saying he'll try to coax the baby into a head-down position by manipulating her from the outside of my belly. Luckily I don't have to worry about that.

Can you believe there is only 2.5 weeks left until Baby M arrives? (and no I am not trying to be coy and still refer to her as Baby M while having a name picked out already. We are narrowing it down but so far we haven't chosen the winner. It might just be a game time decision.)