Fun facts for your baby to know!

• The hormone connection: Oxytocin is the hormone that makes your body create the contractions. Staying calm, focusing and using comfort measures can help your body keep up your level of oxytocin, which will help your labour progress.
• Walk on Keep walking on your own or with others—it’s good for you and your baby!
• Around 38 weeks, healthy babies move 6 times in 2 hours. You should feel regular movements throughout the day, every day
• Around week 28 Your baby’s brain continues to develop. The grooves and folds of their brain are formed.
• Around 24 weeks a baby can hiccup and can open and close its eyelids
• Around 20^th week a vernix develops that helps keep heat in and moisturize the baby’s skin and also helps your baby pass through your birth canal.
• Around 20^th week your baby’s brain cells are making more connections with each other every day. By 20 weeks, your baby’s brain and nervous system are developed enough to react to sound and light.
• In week 13 the baby swallows and drinks amniotic fluid to learn how to swallow
• A massage can help Did you know that a massage can help increase a pregnant woman’s endorphin levels to prepare them for labour?

• Preterm labour Signs of labour before 37 weeks are signs of preterm labour
• Around 20^th week The top of your uterus is about as high as your belly button
• Around week 15 your baby can now hear your voice! Take some time each day to talk, read or sing to your baby.
• Around week 15 your uterus is about the size of a grapefruit
• You may feel Braxton-Hicks contractions near the end of your second trimester and may even be able to see your uterus contracting.
• In week 18 the baby starts noticing when you stroke your belly
• In week 17 the baby is almost a little larger than a pencil
• In week 16 the baby can possible see light and dark
• Your baby’s heartbeat You may be able to hear your baby’s heartbeat at around 12 weeks through a fetal Doppler
• In 0-4 weeks Your baby’s changing environment The placenta, amniotic sac and amniotic fluid begin to form
• Fetal doppler: a device used to hear your baby’s heartbeat in the uterus
• Reflux: where stomach contents back up into the esophagus
• By the end of 13 weeks, baby’s gender is clear
• Baby starts to kick by end of 13 weeks- but you just cant feel it yet
• The baby’s eyes stay closed uptil 7^th month
• In week 12 the baby may be sucking its thumb and sometimes grabs the umbilical cord. Sometimes it yawns. Too bad you cant see this already!
• In week 13 if u bump in a wall- the amniotic fluid protects your baby