doctor/36 weeks

We saw the doctor today. Everything is still normal. The baby hasn't dropped and my cervix still hasn't changed at all. He said his gut feeling was that I would deliver pretty close to my due date, probably because everything has been right on track and perfectly average my entire pregnancy. He was happy with the weight estimate from the ultrasound and guessed that the baby would weigh about 7.5 pounds when she's born.

I'm really starting to feel the effects of her packing on the pounds, though. My feet, hands and wrists are pretty much constantly swollen and achy, I'm moving more slowly and stiffly, and I feel like there's no room left in my stomach. From what I've heard, this is all par for the course and part of Mother Nature's grand plan to ready me for birth and motherhood!

Here's the scoop for this week:

week 36
Your baby is still packing on the pounds — at the rate of about an ounce a day. She now weighs almost 6 pounds (like a crenshaw melon) and is more than 18 1/2 inches long. She's shedding most of the downy covering of hair that covered her body as well as the vernix caseosa, the waxy substance that covered and protected her skin during her nine-month amniotic bath. Your baby swallows both of these substances, along with other secretions, resulting in a blackish mixture, called meconium, will form the contents of her first bowel movement.

At the end of this week, your baby will be considered full-term. (Full-term is 37 to 42 weeks; babies born before 37 weeks are pre-term and those born after 42 are post-term.) Most likely she's in a head-down position. But if she isn't, your practitioner may suggest scheduling an "external cephalic version," which is a fancy way of saying she'll try to coax your baby into a head-down position by manipulating her from the outside of your belly.