Pregnancy week 38: full polish, full alert

Quality-control days

Thirty-eight weeks is quality control: the organs are built and running; what's happening now is refinement — the brain adding connections at a rate it will never match again, the lungs stockpiling more surfactant, the body layering the fat that will manage the world's first cold air.

These are the days that test patience most — everything is ready, nothing is happening, and the phone's aunty-network asks daily. The honest frame: the baby is choosing its birthday from a very short list, and every day it waits is a small deposit in its account.

The clinical frame is equally simple: at thirty-eight, monitoring is the job — the weekly visit, the daily count, the BP watch. Boring is the target state. Boring means all systems normal.

Your baby this week

The baby is about forty-nine and a half centimetres, three kilos or a little more, gaining daily. The lanugo is gone; vernix remains in the creases for delivery day.

The first stool (meconium) is loaded and waiting for its famous first nappy. The eyes are their birth colour for now — the final shade settles across infancy.

The baby has a firm grip, working reflexes (root, suck, startle) and a known voice list. It is, in every testable way, a newborn who happens to still be inside.

Changes in your body

Contractions of every rank rehearse daily now. You are, by this point, the local expert in classifying them — trust the classification, and phone when a pattern holds.

Swelling is at its peak legality: soft, both-ankle, evening swelling is standard issue. The face-fingers-sudden kind keeps its same-day BP rule to the last day.

The body may 'empty the decks' before labour — loose motions and a burst of energy sometimes precede it by a day or two. Neither is proof of anything; both earn a note and a normal dinner.

What to do this week

Attend the weekly check; ask each time: BP fine, fluid fine, position unchanged, anything about the post-date plan updated?

Keep the count's fixed slot through the excitement — the daily ten remains the single most useful thing you personally monitor.

Keep the escorts warm: one message a week — 'still on, phone loud at night?' The drill is a muscle; a weekly twitch keeps it alive.

Sleep-bank shamelessly: naps, early nights, late mornings if life allows. Labour is an athletic event of unknown start time; rest is the only training left on the plan.

Week 38 at a glance

The week's essentials in one place. Your doctor may adjust these for your situation.

When to see a doctor at once

The two lists run unchanged and un-negotiable: go-now (waters, bright-red bleeding, five-minute pains, headache-plus-vision, failed count) and call-first (rhythmic tens, slow counts, fever, burning, unease). The count keeps its full authority to the last morning — term babies slump for real reasons too.

One note for the eager: routine 'let's just induce, everyone's ready' requests before there's a medical reason trade real benefit for real risk. Induction has proper indications — the post-date plan, BP, fluid, growth — and your doctor will use them when they arrive. Impatience isn't one of them.

This article is general information only and no substitute for personal medical advice. The person who can advise you knowing your health, your medicines and your previous pregnancies is your obstetrician, or the doctor at your nearest health centre.

Work out your due date

Enter the first day of your last period and your cycle length — your estimated due date, this week's count and the anomaly scan window all appear right here.

It is only an estimate — most babies aren't born on the exact date. A first-trimester scan dates a pregnancy more accurately; in the end, your doctor's date is the one that counts.

Frequently asked questions

Q: The internet says walking, dates, spicy food, and… intimacy… near term — allowed? — All allowed in a normal pregnancy at term (intimacy included, unless your doctor has said otherwise for placenta or waters reasons) — and none of them reliably start labour. They're comfort, not levers. The baby has the only calendar.

Q: My mother delivered both of us 'early' — does that run in families? — Timing patterns have some family tendency, but it's weak prediction — every pregnancy keeps its own counsel. Interesting note for tea; useless for planning. The bag by the door is the only planning that works.

Q: How long does labour actually take — the stories terrify me? — First labours average twelve to eighteen hours from organised contractions, most of it the slow early phase best spent at home breathing and walking (per your doctor's timing instructions). The screaming-dash of the movies is the last hour, dramatised. The antenatal class's stage map is the antidote to the stories.

Q: What if my waters break in the market/bus/at a function? — Then a story gets born along with the baby. Practically: pad or cloth, phone the hospital, go — wet clothes and all; labour wards have seen everything and judge nothing. The only wrong move is going home to shower and wait. Water = go, from anywhere.