Nine-pounder

One of the NCT group has been told that her baby is 7lb 13oz and that at this stage babies grow by around half a pound a week. If she is two weeks overdue, it could be a nine-pounder...

That's got to sting, no?

Pic of a nine-pounder of a manly kind from http://www.toysoldiers.com.au/

Our days are numbered

The first of our NCT group has popped: Luke Donovan, 7lb 13 oz, c-section two days earlier than planned. Wow! One day he's inside, next day the UK population rises by one!

And the dad? No longer a pregnant bloke. Our days are numbered. Holy Shmoly.

Pic from http://www.theunbrokencircle.co.uk/artist_profile_donovan.htm, an impressive weave-your-own-carrots website on folk music.

Little Fat Lump

With one month to go, the Little Fat Lump is around 5lbs - which gives it a whopping 50 per cent weight gain target in the next four weeks.

(Searched for "Little Fat Lump" on Google, and came up with http://www.butch-femme.com/portal/. Oh Yes I Did.)

And she thinks she is big now!

Here's a curiosity: the measurement in centimetres that the midwife takes of the uterus matches the number of weeks' gestation. PP is 36cm right now, ie 36 weeks.

Putting aside the obvious difficulties (how did it work before metrication? if a non-pregnant woman has a 10 cm uterus is she permanently 10 weeks pregnant?), there's a satisfying cubic function at work here. Assuming the measurement is a chord on a sphere, and if we know the radius (tummy-button to spine) and the angle (around 90 degrees), it is possible to work out the weight gain between now (36cm) and 40 weeks (ie, 40cm) if her density is about 0.9 (when compared with water).

With me so far? Good.

Since my density is waaaaay above 1.0, I'm not about to attempt to work this out. The summary is: she is going to grow much, and I mean *MUCH*, bigger.

It's all to do with linear vs volumetric. As a quick glance through On being the right size by J B S Haldane will tell you, a 36 to 40 linear increase is slightly less than 10%; the same figures give a volume increase of about 23% .

And she thinks she is big now!

"On being the right size," found at http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html

"Honey, I ain’t got no sideways."

Just compared a sideways pic of 16 weeks with today, just over 30 weeks. Blimey. "Honey, I ain’t got no sideways."

For those of you watching in black and white

She has swollen visibly in the past couple of days. According to the medically precise literature, Tobbles is now around two pounds. Or four. Or two-thirds birthweight, which for those of you watching in black and white, is 5.3333333333333333333333333333333 lbs.

Murray Walker owes so much to Ted Lowe, both of them modern heroes. (Pic stolen from the BBC site.)

Swimming along nicely

PP is finding real relief from the increasing poundage by floating in the swimming pool. She's not keen on a water birth (messy) or a home birth (ditto), but the weightlessness is becoming increasingly attractive.

Photo from http://www.hopebarton.co.uk/gallery.asp Hope Barton Barns, where we are staying.

Officially in the third trimester

Officially in the third trimester, and with Toblet(te) bursting through the 2lb barrier, the bump is becoming a hillock, set at a jaunty 90 degrees. I think it's amazing, she thinks it a pain in the front.

Quadrupeds, bipeds and large intestines

The kicking is becoming very obvious now, and quite clearly visible. Roughly half an hour after eating, the gymnastics begin. Priti's appetite has rocketed.

The pressure of the bump is producing ever-more side effects in Priti. Her legs are driving her crazy, sort of fizzing, which I guess is a result of pressure on sciatic nerves as the pelvis distorts. Presumably pregnant bellies developed during the quadrupedal phase, and the relatively recent move to bipedalism has compromised our internal layout (think of the large intestine's route). Perhaps if she went around on all fours, life would be easier. Then again, perhaps not.

According to the Rough Guide, at 25 weeks the fetus is about 730g (1lb 9oz) and 220mm from head to bum.

HxWxL at 24 weeks

According to The Rough Guide to Pregnancy & Birth, Toblet is now 210mm (A4 width) and 630g (1lb 6oz to you and me).

At what point, I wonder, do they give up on such precise figures? We're not reading ahead to find out!

Metric conversions from the excellent http://www.statman.info/ - every conceivable (appropriately enough) conversion you can imagine.

Size matters

According to the "Rough Guide to Pregnancy and Birth" by Kaz Cooke, Toblet is now 20cm (at 23 weeks today) and around 0.5kg (2lb).

Am I obsessing about this? There is very little else in the books (of which we have even more now) about the baby. It seems that the exciting bit as the baby forms is pretty much over, and now it is simply a race to be big enough and fat enough to survive birth.

Kaz, I guess, was chosen as author because an Emma, Karen or Gillian just wouldn't be right for a Rough Guide.

Kaz.

Yeah.

Smallest twins in the UK

Recently I came across the email address of an old friend, Colin McHenry, the super-talented art director at publishing house Centaur Communications. When I worked at Centaur, Colin became the proud owner of twins, born prematurely. I recall him saying they were just "scraps," they were so small. Turns out, they were and are still the smallest twins born in the UK.

Centaur Communications is at http://www.centaur.co.uk/. If you want to learn about business publishing, join Centaur, an outstanding company.

Proper cutaway drawing

How about this for a pregnancy diagram? Proper cutaway drawing with labels. Stolen from http://www.babycenter.com/fetaldevelopment, an excellent site.

On being the right size

Apparently Toblet is now about twelve ounces. One and a half packs of butter. If he or she hits a fairly standard eight pounds at birth, that's a staggering ten-fold increase in weight in the next 20 weeks. (In new money, 360g becomes 3.6kg)

I weigh 200lb (91kg); the comparative growth rate would be reaching slightly less than a ton (910kg) in twenty weeks, adding an average of 90lb (41kg) a week. The world's heaviest person, Jon Brower Minnoch, weighed in at a feeble 1,400lb (635kg).

Pic of Jon Brower Minnoch from http://www.dimensionsmagazine.com/dimtext/kjn/people/heaviest.htm There's something on the web for everyone, I guess.

On being the right size

Depending on which book you read and how many weeks they count, Toblet is around 320g, covered in brown greasy goo to stop it shrinking in the wash, and growing fast.

I peeked ahead in one of the books. In ten weeks from now, 30 weeks, the baby will be more than three times heavier at over 1kg.

Unbelievable.

Try reading J B S Haldane, "On being the right size," found at http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html