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Friday 14 September 2012

Retrospective Wisdom: Week 24

"Week 24 has a great significance for your baby. This is the week when neonatalogists would give the baby a reasonable chance of survival if he or she is born early. Typically babies born early don't go home until what would have been the original due date, which is more than 3 months away at this point.

Your baby is busy working on maturing his or her lungs to prepare for life outside your uterus. He or she is also layering more brown fat to help regulate body temperature at birth.

This week your baby is nearly 30 centimetres long and weighs a bit over 450 grams." - excerpt from The Complete Illustrated Pregnancy Companion by Robin Elise Weiss with Dr. Marcello Pietrantoni.

Does that mean Jr is overweight? Dr. Haris Hamzah seems to think Jr's growing at the average rate and that there is nothing to worry about.

I started doing the fetal kick counts daily at 10 pm. It is an easy process of counting movements of kick, roll, punch or flip within 30 minutes. Once the count reaches 10 movements, I am done until the next day. Often, Jr can reach 10 movements in less than 10 minutes. Fetal kick counts is supposed to be a daily routine until Jr is born.

The movements felt bigger now and Z managed to catch Jr doing "the Mexican wave" one evening. Sleeping on my back with double pillows and support under the knees still seem more comfortable than sleeping on my left side. I can almost never sleep on my right side for unknown uncomfortable reasons. Sometimes in the night, Jr would be kicking me so hard it wakes me up!

Perhaps the funniest pregnancy experience is that I started snoring audibly, even to myself. Often, I would wake up from sleep, disturbed by my own noise! It is a wonder how Z can sleep through my loud snoring. I have read that this is a normal incident of narrowing air passages so there is nothing to worry about, although a non-medicated nasal strip may be required to prevent snoring.

The second funniest pregnancy experience would be knocking into sides of furniture with my hips as I have yet to adjust to my wider and bigger body. So far, there is no real harm other than light bruising - still, I ought to be more careful!

I weighed in at 47 kg at the start of pregnancy and dropped to 45 kg during PukeFest. The good news was that I hit 55 kg at week 24. Mama, Dada, Z and Dr. Haris Hamzah were all very pleased with this healthy gain. Post week 20, almost all food look and taste good to me! Since I have been able to drink Evian again, I try to drink as much as I can tolerate. Normal boiled tap water, however, remain intolerable in terms of texture and taste. Go figure...
 
**Retrospective Wisdom: Normal weight gain can be shed off with breastfeeding. Do not over- indulge during pregnancy as some of my friends who did eat like there is no tomorrow for 9 months still carry the extra bulge for years.**

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