Twenty-Three Weeks

I am twenty-three weeks pregnant as of this past Saturday. According to BabyCenter, it is time to turn on the radio and sway to the music. With her sense of movement well developed by now, the baby can feel me move around and dance. And now that she is more than eleven inches long and weighs just over a pound (about as much as a large mango), squirming might become more visible from underneath my clothes. Blood vessels in her lungs are developing to prepare for breathing, and the sounds that the baby's increasingly keen ears pick up are preparing her for entry into the outside world. Loud noises that become familiar now — such as barking dogs or the roar of the vacuum cleaner — probably will not faze her when she hears them outside the womb.

I think I forgot to mention that, at the ultrasound, the technicians estimated the baby to be fifteen ounces (so just under a pound) at that point, based on their measurements. I do not remember the technician giving us that information at Elsa's twenty-week ultrasound, so it will be interesting to see if this baby ends up being bigger, smaller, or about the same at birth. I am just praying that she is at least close to her sister's birth weight (at 8 pounds, 9.6 ounces), and nothing close to the 11 pounds I weighed at birth!