"During pregnancy, your baby has been growing sex organs. Mature sperms won't appear in the male testes until after puberty but if you are having a girl, she is developing primitive egg cells already. At birth, she will already carry every egg she will ever have in her lifetime.
Your baby weight about 225 grams and is covered in fur. The good news is that most of this fine hair or lanugo will disappear before birth. You will occasionally see small patches of hair on the lower back as long sideburns. Your baby is also working on baby teeth this week." - excerpt from The Complete Illustrated Pregnancy Companion by Robin Elise Weiss with Dr. Marcello Pietrantoni.
Occasionally, I would feel the baby hardening up in my uterus once or twice daily. This is known as Braxton-Hicks contractions, so I was told. It is the baby's way of practising for vaginal birth and that there is nothing to worry about unless it is more than 6 contractions per hour.
One evening at about 10 p.m. when we were about to retire, I started having such contractions. I started counting and when the number got to 6 in 30 minutes, we rang the hospital. The polite and knowledgeable nurse/telephonist at the 24 hour hot line of the hospital asked standard questions and after assessing our situation, we were asked to check into the ER.
By 10.40 p.m. when we left The House, I have had 8 contractions. Mama and Dada looked worried as we left. Z promised to update them via SMS. During the car ride to the hospital, Z and I kept talking to the baby to ask the baby to behave and relax. We kept telling the baby that as excited as we were to meet him or her, it was just not time yet! The pep talk seemed to work as there was only 1 more contraction by 11 p.m. bringing the total to 9.
I was whisked into ER in a wheelchair and after a quick blood pressure assessment by the attending nurse, I was put onto the observation ward. Medical Officer for the night rang Dr. Haris Hamzah for a quick consult. As the Doppler showed 155 fetal heartbeats (which is within the normal range), we felt less panicky. A thorough urine test was also done to rule out infections. The results were negative so we were more calm by then.
After 2 hours of further observation, I was discharged. We went home tired and sleepy. Mama was waiting up for us and after a quick supper, we all finally went to bed for a very short rest before the drive to a mini holiday.
Measurements taken by Dr. Haris Hamzah on 28 November 2009:
BPD: 4.65 centimentres
Head circumference: 17.15 centimetres
Abdominal circumference: 14.09 centimetres
Femur length: 2.8 centimetres
**Retrospective Wisdom: Do not fear looking like a hypochondriac for having any abnormal symptoms examined, even if the results show that everything is fine.**
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