Date of ultrasound: 06 April 2002

Don't you just love this ultrasound image? It's like I'm doing a hand salute! I was also moving my mouth as if swallowing something (amniotic fluid, if I didn't know better.)

Welcome to the third and final trimester - the homestretch! Mom could only sigh in disappointment at how short the wonderful 2nd trimester was. Now she'll have to deal with the heaviness and hugeness of the last trimester! She could only look longingly at the pre-pregnancy clothes in her wardrobe, wondering when she would be able to fit into those again.

It seems like I have undergone a growth spurt this month, and during this checkup the doctor could only focus at one part of my body at a time. Mom noticed that he couldn't measure my entire length anymore, instead he measured my BPD, abdominal diameter (still have to research what exactly they call that), and the femur length. They use this equation where they input all these values to calculate the estimated weight of the fetus - and guess what? My estimated weight is 1.39 kg! My Mom was so surprised to realize that all these weeks she'd been lugging around more than 1 kilo of extra life inside her! Well, she does have a funny way of walking nowadays - a "waddle-walk," she calls it. Pretty soon she expects to just "waddle" like a duck.

Mom was able to decrease her weight gain to about 2.2 kilos this month, but still the doctor insisted that she gained too much. He also remarked that I look bigger than average. Hey, ever thought that maybe Filipino babies could be big?

From this point on Mom will be visiting the doctor every two weeks.

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In the know:
The baby's brain is still developing rapidly, increasing the number of interconnections between individual nerve cells and identifying groups of cells that will perform complicated functions throughout the baby's lifetime. At this point the baby can register information from all five of its senses. While the baby's senses may be prepared to process information, certain senses have limited opportunities to operate. Since the baby doesn't breathe air inside the uterus, the sense of smell is on hold until after birth.

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