Week 33 – Baby is Getting Ready to Fight Their Own Battles

Baby is still very busy this week, packing on the weight and developing the safeguards they will need to help keep them healthy when they hit the outside world. You on the other hand may be feeling rather down and out as sleep does not seem to be easy to come by right now.

Your Baby in Week 33 of Pregnancy

Baby is continuing to grow but at 33 weeks your uterus is pretty much full to bursting and no more amniotic fluid will be produced from this point on, something that explains why, over the next few weeks, Baby’s kicks and punches will feel a little bit sharper and more pronounced – there is simply not as much fluid to cushion the blows anymore! Baby is still just fine, they have more than enough fluid around them to keep them happy until it is time to leave the womb, it just may not be so comfortable for you!

As Baby grows the uterine wall begins to thin out, so more light is flooding into Baby’s comfy chamber, something that helps them differentiate between night and day. Of course, as nay new parent can testify to, this does not mean that they will use this knowledge once they are out in the big wide world right away, but it is there.

Perhaps the biggest milestone this week for Baby is the fact that their own immune system is beginning to function, so that, along with some helpful antibodies from Mum their little bodies will be equipped to fight off mild infections that they might encounter during their first weeks on the outside.

Your Body in Week 33 of Pregnancy

At the moment your whole body is under more than a little bit of stress, so it really does seem unfair that for most women, the third trimester seems to usher in an inability to get a really good night’s sleep when you need it the most. Even if you are a first time Mum you will be more than aware of the fact that sleep is going to be hard to come by once baby arrives, so the fact that you don’t seem able to ‘stock up’ at the moment is very frustrating!

There are 101 reasons (or more) why great sleep is hard to come by. Baby’s increased movement does not help (babies tend to be no great respecters of other people’s sleep, even before they officially arrive) and neither does your still growing bump, which makes finding a comfortable position to sleep in harder than ever before. Combine these things with the fact that thanks to Baby’s lower position the urgent need to pee that drove you nuts in your first trimester is back and that you just can’t quite seem to put all of your worries and anxieties about Baby’s pending arrival to rest and it is little wonder that so many Mums suffer through pregnancy insomnia right now.

To try and combat it try taking a warm soak before bed and then turn in with a glass of warm milk. If you can’t sleep try reading a book or listening to some quieter, more soothing music, or even enlist your partner to give you a nice relaxing massage. If worst comes to worst and you really cannot get to sleep you can always try to look on the bright side and see it as practice for the sleepless nights to come and then try to grab naps in the day whenever you can.

Tips for the 33rd Week of Pregnancy – Make Sure You Get Eight

With the return of the very inconvenient need to pee at the most inopportune moments some Mums to Be are tempted to cut down on the amount of liquids they intake when they know that they may be heading someplace where quick bathroom access may not be so easy. This is a big no no though. Although a Mum to Be does not have to consume more water than the average woman getting the recommended eight glasses of water a day is a must. And by eight glasses we mean full sized 330 ml glasses, not those little paper cups you find near the cooler at work.

There are some very good reasons why drinking enough is more important than ever for both you and Baby right now. Water helps to send nutrients to Baby more quickly, something that is important as they have so much rapid growth to do right now and it also helps remove waste more efficiently, something that makes life in their bubble a little pleasanter for Baby.

Keeping well hydrated will also help you. The dry skin that is a problem for many women in their third trimester can be kept at bay to a certain extent by the right amount of hydration and believe it or not, so can some of that awkward swelling. Usually pregnant women mistakenly associate lots of water intake with an increase in water weight, but in fact the opposite is actually true. Paradoxically, drinking plenty of nice plain water can actually help to keep excessive water retention under control — and prevent you from becoming too much of a puff mummy.

Finally, for Singapore Mummies to be, the heat is never really too far away, and heat means that you really need your body’d inbuilt cooling system to function at the highest level possible, and making sure that you are getting enough liquids will help do just that.

Plain water is, we understand, kind of boring, and that fact is one of the reasons that so many women, expecting or not, struggle to meet that eight glass mark every day. To help get past that mental roadblock try a flavored water or a juice spritzer (half juice, half sparkling water) instead.