33 Week Growth

How your baby's growing:
This week your baby weighs a little over 4 pounds and measures 17.2 inches from the top of his head to his heels. His skin is becoming less red and wrinkled, and while most of his bones are hardening, his skull is quite pliable and not completely joined. This will help him ease out of your relatively narrow birth canal.

Starting at about week 26, your baby has slept and awoken at regular intervals. He closes his eyes when he sleeps, and he'll even dream during the last month before birth. No one knows what babies dream about in the womb, but they show reactions ranging from frowns and smiles to crying and kicking. Asleep or awake, you may feel the kicks in a new place around now--in your rib cage, just below your breasts--as he moves into the head-down position where he'll probably stay until birth.

The level of amniotic fluid in your uterus has reached its maximum, making it likely that you have more baby than fluid now. That's one reason why you're probably feeling lots of nudges and pushes — there's less liquid to cushion the blows. (Of course that means you're even closer to your baby now!) If your uterine walls had eyes, here's what you'd see: your fetus acting more and more like a baby, with his or her eyes closing during sleep and opening while awake. And because those uterine walls are becoming thinner, more light penetrates the womb, helping your baby differentiate between day and night (now if only baby can remember that difference on the outside!).
And good news! Your baby has reached an important milestone about now: The development of his or her own immune system that (along with antibodies from you) will be able to provide protection from mild infections.

In these last few weeks before delivery, billions of your baby's brain cells are helping her to learn about her environment. These cells help her to listen, feel, and even see. In fact, this is another important week for visual development. By now, your baby may now be able to experience her surroundings visually, since the pupils of her eye can now detect some light. Her pupils are constricting and dilating to allow her baby to see dim shapes.
Your baby now weighs about 4.4 pounds! (Babies gain a good deal of their weight in the final few weeks before birth.) She is about 16.4 inches long from head to toe.
Other developments this week include:
*Baby's head size will increase about 3/8 of an inch in circumference this week.
*Baby is now sleeping much of the time.
*Baby's lungs are continuing to mature.
*Fat will continue to be added on to Baby's body for protection and warmth.
*The testicles of most boys have by now moved into the scrotum.

How your life's changing:
You may be feeling some aches and even numbness in your fingers, wrists, and hands. Like many other tissues in your body, those in your wrist can swell, which can increase pressure in the carpal tunnel, a bony canal in your wrist. Nerves that run through this "tunnel" end up pinched, creating numbness, tingling, shooting or burning pain, or a dull ache. Try wearing a brace or propping your arm up with a pillow when you sleep. If your work requires repetitive hand movements (at a keyboard or assembly line, for example), remember to stretch your hands when you take breaks.If you're having trouble sleeping at night, try wedging a pillow between your legs and behind your back. If that doesn't help, try sleeping in a semi-upright position, with several pillows behind your head (or sleep in a recliner!). If frequent trips to the bathroom are robbing you of your zz's, cut back on fluids by late afternoon or evening.

Speaking of sleep, rest may be elusive by this point. Insomnia is common during the last trimester, and what sleep you do get will be interrupted by frequent trips to the bathroom. Hemorrhoids, heartburn, reflux (which feels like your food is coming up again), lower back pain, and swollen feet are among the commonest complaints. Many women find that it helps to eat small, frequent meals instead of large ones; use extra pillows to support belly and back; and sleep alone if your partner's tossing and turning (or snoring) wakes you up just as you're drifting off.

By this time, the fetus should have turned around and begun to point head-down in the direction of the cervix (This occurrence will provide more space in the upper abdomen, making it easier for you to breathe.
If you're a first-time mother, your child's head may move into the pelvis this week and press firmly against your cervix. (This happens to about half of all first-time mothers.) If you've already had at least one child, this won't happen until about a week before labor; for some experienced moms, baby won't move into position until the advanced stages of labor.