Ninth month of pregnancy - the baby is ready for delivery and ready to meet the world. It could be any minute. And when exactly? The interested person himself decides about it.
The ninth monthis the last straight, the last days spent in my mother's belly. After 36 weeks of intensive growth and development, the baby is fully formed and you have to reckon with the fact that he may be born at any time.
Ninth month: fully operational
Placenta - this extraordinary organ that has kept the child alive until now, supplying it with oxygen and nutrients - slowly ends its activity and begins to age. Every day he works less and less efficiently, clots and lumps of calcium form on him. She has the right to be tired because she worked hard almost throughout her pregnancy. However, there may be some risks involved in doing so as the placenta is no longer able to meet the baby's growing needs. It is a sign that it is high time to be born - to start eating and breathing on your own, especially since the lungs are fully mature and ready to start work.
The nervous system is also ready for new challenges - the brain and the network of nerve fibers at birth consist of 100 billion cells! It will act reflexively at first - the newborn is equipped with more than 70 reflexes (e.g., sucking, searching for the breast), most of which develop towards the end of pregnancy.
Ninth month: intimate matters
The suckling reflex is well developed, for example, so that the baby does not starve after birth. Meanwhile, however, as long as he does not yet have access to the mother's breast, he sucks his own thumb. It is said to have a calming effect on him, and some researchers say it gives him sensual pleasure. This thesis would be confirmed by the fact that a male fetus usually gets an erection when sucking the thumb. They are quite common - according to a 1995 study at the University of Fukuoka (Japan), a fetus between 36 and 39 weeks of gestation gets three erections within an hour, lasting from 5 to 17 minutes!
Before delivery, your baby may have swollen nipples (this applies to both sexes, including boys) and enlarged genitals - labia or testes. This phenomenon is caused by the effects of the mother's pregnancy hormones on the baby and is not a pathology. Everything will be back to normal shortly afterchildbirth, when the baby stops drawing food directly from the mother's blood.
ImportantWhat does the baby look like now?
The baby is fully formed, has a plump body and a he althy pink skin. The bristle is gone, but the head is covered with hairs 1-3 cm long. At the end of the ninth month of pregnancy, the length of the baby's entire body is 48-50 cm and its weight is about 3 kg.
Ninth month of pregnancy: meconium appears
Your baby's gut builds up waste material - a sticky substance called meconium that can be excreted just before or after birth. If meconium is donated before or during labor, it may indicate hypoxia of the baby - the meconium then has a dark green, almost black color. Therefore, greenish amniotic amniotic fluid is a signal that you need to see your doctor quickly.
Ninth month pregnant: hard to move
The baby is already very crowded - from the 37th week of gestation his movements may not be felt, because there is no room for them. The little body, upside down, is immobilized in a tight uterus.
An interesting fact is that the child's body at that time consists of as many as 300 bones, while an adult has almost a third less (206). How it's possible? It is simply that many bones heal after childbirth (e.g. skull bones) - thanks to this, the child's body is more "plastic", it is easier to bear the tightness and squeeze through the birth canal.
When does labor start?
Why at this and not another moment? This is not fully known. It is said that sometimes a child speeds up labor in response to the feeling of tightness. In any case, it decides about it - for reasons that remain a mystery to researchers, a light "lights up" in the hypothalamus of his brain, a signal appears: time to be born. At this signal, mothers' blood hormones begin to circulate faster and faster, causing the uterus to contract - and soon a new citizen appears in the world.
monthly "M jak mama"