@ 32 Weeks

At 32 weeks, Peanut now weighs upwards of four pounds, and Monica's blood volume has increased by as much as 50 per cent, meaning she has 50 per cent more blood and plasma in her body right now than she did before she was pregnant. This is due, of course, to the baby's increasing needs, but it also helps to offset blood loss during birth. He's now getting big enough that Monica's having a slightly harder time breathing (he's pushing on many organs, including her lungs) and sleeping (he's making her abdominal muscles stretch, and his growth is making movement in Monica's sleep more difficult). You can see in this illustration, courtesy of babycenter.com, that Peanut's big enough that he's more or less in one position (though he's DEFINITELY moving a LOT), but notice how, in this picture, the baby's little rump is pushing out towards the tummy--the last couple of days, we've really noticed how there's a little spot that's quite hard right in the center of Monica's belly, just above her belly button. This illustration is only a representation of an average, but that little hard spot we're feeling is his butt, methinks.
Monica's gaining about a pound a week at this point in the pregnancy, and fully half of that weight gain is actually the baby's. He's also got most all of the hair he's going to have at birth, whether that's a full head of it or peach fuzz. One of the craziest things to me is that pregnancy hormones cause Monica's ligaments to loosen. This would seem--logically, I think??--to be for the sake of loosening her skeletal structure in order to push out the baby. The fact, however, that a hormone causes ligaments to loosen in order for a baby to be pushed out between bones blows my mind. We have doctor's appointment at 9:00 o'clock this morning...more after that.