Portal about Pregnancy

You
That baby is already constricting your lungs and your stomach. Now he’s starting to push downwards, constricting your bladder, so your nights may be disturbed by the frequent need to pee.

Your baby
New research suggests your baby is able to move rhythmically to music he hears outside the womb (and it feels as if he’s dancing on your bladder!). At the moment, separate pliable plates form his skull. These compress and slide over one another during labour - in fact they don’t fuse and harden completely until your baby is about 18 months old.

Time for you

You
For the last couple of months, you may feel increasingly tired as your baby gets heavier and your bump more cumbersome. Learn to snatch five minutes’ rest here and there - the ability to cat-nap will be a huge advantage when a solid eight hours is no longer possible.

Your baby
Taste is developing and it’s believed your baby gets a tiny tang of what you are eating. He is now also packing on the pounds and fat stores are being laid down under his skin. Consequently, he is becoming less wrinkly and his skin is growing more opaque. Plus he is beginning to be able to dream.

You
From now on sleeping may be hard - getting comfy in bed is tough and turning over is a mammoth task. Also, your baby may well kick his hardest just when you settle down to go to sleep. That’s because, when you are up and about, he is rocked to sleep in your pelvis. The moment you lie down, the rocking stops and he perks up and starts to play.

Your baby
The lanugo - the hair that covered your baby - now begins to fall out. Some babies are born a little furry! But don’t worry, it will fall out over the first few weeks.

Planning that delivery

You

If your baby is breech, encourage him to turn by spending some time each day on hands and knees – this maximises space so he can manoeuvre into the best position. (Doctors can help too, by manipulating your bump, persuading your baby to turn.) Spending time on hands and knees also helps your baby settle into a position with his spine running along your belly (anterior). If he lies spine to spine (posterior) labour is likely to be longer.

Your baby
Most babies will be head down by now, but 4% will remain breech (either feet or bottom down) at the time of the birth. As your baby grows and room in the womb shrinks, changing position will become harder.

You
It’s not just during the first trimester (when organ development is frantic) that you need to watch what you eat and drink. Overdoing the booze now could damage your baby’s brain because brain development is really going into overdrive.

Your baby
Indeed, during this final trimester your baby’s brain mass really rockets. As the brain grows rapidly within the skull, it starts to coil and fold into its characteristic form, rather like a walnut.

Food for thought
Oily fish contains omega-3 fatty acids, which are believed to boost brain power. So, while your baby’s brain development is rapid, it’s a good idea to eat oily fish regularly. Fish to try are:

Many infants are born with some involvement of the cord -- it may be wrapped around the neck, over the shoulder, under the arm ... It is usually pretty easy to slip it over the head and deliver the rest of the baby. In some cases, it is so tight that it must be clamped and cut before birth. If this is the case, it is very important to deliver the baby without delay. In all the births I've attended, I've only had to clamp and cut before birth in two cases. If the baby is born and there appears to be no problem, generally there are no health risks.

The infant with the tight cord or a short cord before the birth can suffer hypoxia (lack of oxygen to the brain) if it is so tight, or so compressed, as to cause decelerations in the fetal heart. Providers can observe certain fetal heart rate decelerations which indicate cord problems. Delivery may be hastened or a cesarean may be done if the pattern looks ominous or is occurring over too long a time.

· Most very young teens have not had intercourse: 8 in 10 girls and 7 in 10 boys are sexually inexperienced at age 15. 1

· The likelihood of teenagers' having intercourse increases steadily with age; however, about 1 in 5 young people do not have intercourse while teenagers.2

· Most young people begin having sex in their mid-to-late teens, about 8 years before they marry; more than half of 17-year-olds have had intercourse.3

· While 93% of teenage women report that their first intercourse was voluntary, one-quarter of these young women report that it was unwanted.4

· The younger women are, when they first have intercourse, the more likely they are to have had unwanted or nonvoluntary first sex--7 in 10 of those who had sex before age 13, for example.5

Questions to Ask:

In order for families to make a responsible decision in selecting a birth setting, they will need to seek information from the birth center. Some of the facts you need to know are:

Are birth attendants licensed health care providers (i.e., physician, nurse-midwife or licensed midwife)?
Is the birth center accredited by the Commission for the Accreditation of Birth Centers
What are the arrangements for care if complications arise that require referral to an obstetrician or admission to a hospital?
What do the charges for care cover and will your insurance plan pay for these services?

The birth plan is dead! Long live birth planning!

The time has come when most maternity care providers greet birth plans with scorn. No busy professional wants to wade through a long document full of non-negotiable demands.

Today, most obstetricians and hospitals at least pay lip service to the idea of treating each woman with respect and making an attempt to honor her requests. Let’s face it, doctors and hospitals are engaged in a keen competition for every health care dollar spent. Consequently, they are very interested in patient satisfaction. The necessity today is to communicate what an individual’s needs are for this specific birth. Presenting these plans in a non-threatening way guarantees more willing cooperation from the doctors and nurses involved.

Address book. Make sure the numbers are up to date; your mother is not going to be happy about being the last to get the news if you forgot to write in her new cell phone number.

Telephone calling card. This hopefully will make it possible to make a long distance call from the room, which in general is only slightly more difficult than calling home from the back side of the Himalayas. If not, at least it’ll work at the pay phone down in the lobby.

Non-skid slippers. The non-skid part is important, you’ll realize that the night after the baby is born as you listen to the staff running the waxing machine over the same four square feet of floor just outside your room for six and a half hours straight.