Today We Are 36 Weeks Pregnant

No comments from the peanut gallery, please!

How Our Baby Girl Is Growing:

Our baby girl 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.  Our baby girl swallows both of these substances, along with other secretions, resulting in a blackish mixture, called meconium, which will form the contents of her first bowel movement.

At the end of this week, our baby girl 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, Dr. Katz may suggest scheduling an "external cephalic version," which is a fancy way of saying he'll try to coax our baby girl into a head-down position by manipulating her from the outside of my belly.

Modified from: http://www.babycenter.com/6_your-pregnancy-36-weeks_1125.bc?read_more=1&scid=mbtw_preg36:932&pe=2UxuZCY