29 Weeks

This week your baby weighs in at 2.6 pounds and measures at about 16 inches. To help with the discomforts of pregnancy that you may be having at this time you should get plenty of rest, wear comfortable, supportive shoes and continue to eat a healthy balanced diet. If you haven’t started working on your birth plan, now is the time to get started! Be sure to get your partner’s input on this important document that will help guide everyone during your labor and birth.

Baby’s head is no longer disproportionate to the rest of the body. The senses are functioning and the eyes can move around inside the eye sockets. Little boy’s testicles are now moving toward their scrotum and little girls will have a prominent clitoris because it is not yet covered by the small labia, as this happens in the last few weeks of pregnancy.

Baby’s skin is becoming less wrinkly as they continue to add fat and gain weight. The uterus is becoming more cramped now and the kicks and punches that you have felt will probably feel less pronounced at this point. You’ll definitely still be able to tell that baby is there, though!

All is well. I have a cold and that is very annoying, but pregnancy-wise I still feel really great. No complaints at all. I have been going for chiropractic adjustments and he has noticed that my right hip is a little bit forward so that is what he has been working on. I think it's probably because of my somewhat heavy and low hanging purse so I've been shopping for a short handled purse which I think will be more comfortable. Yesterday I went shopping for walking shoes (couldn't make a decision) but I still wear my flip-flops daily, and very comfortably.

Everywhere I go people say I must be due really soon. I just smile and answer "not as soon as you think!" Mostly I feel pretty comfortable with it, but I do have a small worry that there might be something undesirable going on to cause me to be so big. I'm meeting with our midwife from Eva's birth today so hopefully she wouldn't mind logging an opinion. I saw our midwife from Micah's birth yesterday and she was kind of rushed so I didn't get her opinion on that. She did say a number of times how good I looked which made me feel happy.

Baby is moving around more than ever! Lots of twitching, rolling around, and kicking. So far nothing uncomfortable at all.

Yesterday I ordered Sara Wickham's book "Anti-D in Midwifery: Panacea or Paradox?". I agonized about it because it's quite expensive. Apparently it is THE go-to book for Rh negative expectant mothers. Decisions surrounding my Rh status are very important and I don't just want to rely on internet research since there isn't a huge amount of information available on it. Yesterday when I asked Sari about delayed cord clamping she said that she generally doesn't rush to clamp, unless the mother is Rh negative. According to her research there could be danger to the baby as the placenta comes away from the uterine wall. I was alarmed at first but the more I think about it the more it doesn't make sense. It is I who would be sensitized by exposure to the baby's Rh+ blood, but my blood has no Rh factor in it so exposure to my blood wouldn't be dangerous to the baby unless I had already been sensitized and started to produce antibodies. At least that's the way I understand it. I've done some further internet research with Google Scholar and the study abstracts that I found which addressed Rh- mothers and delayed cord clamping showed that it is especially important to delay clamping with Rh- mothers because early clamping could actually cause infant and maternal blood to mix as blood "backs up" through the umbilical cord to the mother's bloodstream.