Maternity leave begins

How is your baby growing?

At 35 weeks of pregnancy, your baby can already breathe independently and its nervous and immune systems, as well as its gastrointestinal system, are ready for life outside the womb. This means that your baby would have a nearly 99% chance of survival without intensive medical care. However, it may continue to store fat.  

If you are expecting a boy, his testicles should have moved from inside his body to the scrotum. If this has not happened and your baby is born with cryptorchidism, the testicles still have time until the 6th month of life to move. Only after that will medical assistance be required. 

How is your belly growing?

Do you feel like you're about to burst? That's not surprising, because you've probably gained 11.5 to 13.5 kg since the beginning of your pregnancy, now that you're in your 35th week. It's good that you're on maternity leave, because your belly is stretched, your back has to carry a lot of weight, and your early labor pains give you an idea of what you'll face during childbirth. As has been written many times: take breaks, put your feet up, and gather your strength for childbirth.

With various types of contractions, your body is preparing for childbirth. Preliminary contractions and descent contractions encourage your baby to turn into the birthing position. These contractions come irregularly and disappear after a few minutes. This is good.

However, if you experience premature contractions, you should contact your midwife or gynecologist immediately. Premature contractions come regularly and are accompanied by bloody or watery discharge – if these symptoms occur, you must react immediately!

Between the 35th and 38th week of pregnancy, your gynecologist will recommend a vaginal smear if you plan to give birth naturally. As your baby must pass through the birth canal, it may become infected by bacteria in your vagina. The vaginal swab will show if there are any bacteria, in which case antibiotics will need to be administered to protect your baby.  

What makes you grow as a family?

It will start soon. Your hospital bag is surely already packed. If not, here is a checklist of things you need to pack.

In addition to the bag, it's a good idea to make a list of all the people you want to notify when labor starts. You may want to save the most important phone numbers directly on your and your partner's cell phones.  

When you stop working and spend a lot of time at home, you may be overcome by the desire to prepare your nest. Of course, it's nice to have everything ready for the new citizen of the world. But take it easy and, above all, let the future dad help.  

Mom Christine also has some advice about the urge to nest: 

You will feel the need to clean all the windows and the bathroom before the birth, finally sort through all the documents and get rid of unnecessary things – as if the baby were a very important visitor who would judge you for it. But the baby doesn't care about any of that, they just want to be with you. So, maybe you should remember: whatever you didn't manage to do in the last year probably doesn't need to be done now. Leave it all behind ;-)