Pregnancy Week Twenty
Baby’s Development
Can you believe that you are halfway through pregnancy?! Depending on how easy your experience has been, this news may sadden you or fill you with joy. No matter how you react, you simply can’t stop your baby from making its grand entrance into this world. One of the things that will at least make this experience a tad less painful has developed this week. Your baby becomes covered in a waxy, creamy white substance known as vernix caseosa, shielding its skin from the moisture of the amniotic fluid while easing his delivery. Who says nature is insensitive and cruel??
Twenty weeks welcomes your baby’s adult teeth buds as they emerge behind her baby teeth buds. She’ll also begin to enjoy REM sleep for the first time and will actually dream as she sleeps within.
Your fetus’s digestive system is getting to work this week as well. Lately, she has been opening and closing her mouth to swallow amniotic fluid. This is necessary for her to absorb some of the water that’s in it, but the rest is used as digestion practice by her intestines. While inside of you, she’ll only release urine into the amniotic fluid and store up the solid waste from her almost constant swallowing. When she is born, this tarry, black waste referred to as ‘meconium’ is eliminated in her first bowel movements. Like her first kicks and jumps inside of you, you’ll have a hard time forgetting that first meconium diaper…
Your Body and Emotions
After this week, your belly will start to grow at a steady pace. At every obstetrician appointment, your doctor will measure your fundal height, or the height of your uterus from your pelvic bones to the top of your uterus. This height should increase every week and should roughly correlate to how many weeks pregnant you are. Because having an ultrasound every week is simply not possible, measuring your fundal height helps your doctor get an idea of how well you’re progressing.
As the rate of bump growth increases rapidly, many women start to experience an uncomfortable itching sensation across their bellies. This is a side effect to the skin stretching and may even be a precursor to stretch marks. Whereas the application of a pregnancy safe body cream can do wonders to help the itching, nothing will stop stretch marks. These much-despised marks are genetic. Therefore if your mother/grandmother/aunt or uncle has a predisposition to them, you’ll probably end up with a few by the time your delivery date rolls around. Don’t get fooled by creams that promise to reduce them. The only thing that you can do is look after your skin as best your can with oils or cocoa butter and hope for the best. Although most women come out of pregnancy with a few well earned ‘battle scars’, you may be in the happy minority that has none.
Dad’s Tips
Congratulations! You’ve both survived half of your pregnancy together. Your partner’s belly is getting bigger by the day and you’ve probably learned how to negotiate around the landmines of her emotions by now. Why not treat both of you to celebrate your growth (literally and figuratively). Booking a couples massage at a spa will give the two of you a much needed break as well as a chance for intimacy together. Holding hands in a couples room while your tension and stress in kneaded away…what a wonderful idea!
If massage isn’t your thing, why not arrange a night out? Dancing and drinking is obviously out of the question at this point, but why not take in a show or get reservations at a high-end restaurant? If your budget doesn’t allow such extravagance, simply taking the time to make a dinner you’ll both enjoy and quietly reminiscing over the last 20 weeks might be just what the two of you need.