October 31, 2010

33 Weeks: Honeydew


By now, you have all the amniotic fluid you are going to have and the amount will remain consistent until delivery. Your baby's brain continues to grow, and increase the size of his head. Your baby continues to develop fat deposits under the skin, changing the color of her skin from red to pink.

This week your baby weighs a little over 4 pounds (heft a pineapple) and has passed the 17-inch mark. She's rapidly losing that wrinkled, alien look and his skeleton is hardening. The bones in her skull aren't fused together, which allows them to move and slightly overlap, thus making it easier for her to fit through the birth canal. (The pressure on the head during birth is so intense that many babies are born with a conehead-like appearance.) These bones don't entirely fuse until early adulthood, so they can grow as his brain and other tissue expands during infancy and childhood.

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