36 Weeks Pregnant - I’ve never weighed this much before!
Weekly pregnancy updates from a childbirth educator, doula and mum to 2 little girls. Come and join me on my journey as I share how I’m feeling, how baby is developing, what I’m doing to prepare, and some favourite resources!
I weighed myself today and saw a bigger number than I have ever seen in my life before! And I am very unfazed. So far I’ve gained 4kg more than I did in my previous pregnancies, and we’ve still got a month or more to go! I feel like it’s pretty much all showing up in my belly, as I’m not experiencing swelling or fluid retention. Probably a bit on hips/thighs, but honestly I’m glad to have a bit of extra “padding” before going into breastfeeding, since that requires SO much energy!
So, let’s talk a bit about weight gain in pregnancy - what is normal and is it something we should be concerned about?
Healthy weight gain in pregnancy
Weight gain varies a lot in pregnancy and there is no right amount. What is normal and healthy is very individual, and comparing your experience to that of other people is not really useful at all! A median weight gain would fall in the range of around 10-15kg, but what is healthy for you could be significantly more or less, depending on your pre-pregnancy weight, your build, your ethnicity, your lifestyle and your baby’s size, among other factors.
With so many variables at play, I think it’s much more helpful to focus on eating healthy nourishing foods, drinking plenty of water, and moving your body as much as you can, rather than focusing on what your weight is doing!
Where does the weight go?
Baby - 3-4 kg
Placenta - 1-1.5kg
Amniotic fluid - 1-1.5kg
Increased blood supply - 2kg
Breast tissue and extra fat stores in preparation for breastfeeding - 0-5+kg
Is it important to track my weight gain during pregnancy?
This depends. If you were a healthy weight pre-pregnancy, don't have any particular health conditions or pregnancy complications, eat healthy meals with a focus on high protein and low sugar intake, and get regular exercise, weight tracking might be pretty irrelevant. You could choose to do it or not. I do like to keep track of mine, but not because I think it’s an important thing I should do. Just because I’m that type of person! And I don’t obsess over it either. Just weigh in every few weeks or so and note it down out of curiosity. It doesn’t change my relationship with myself or my lifestyle. Just a piece of data.
However, if you have struggled with body image and weight gain/loss in the past, I’d suggest it might be healthier for you not to weigh yourself in pregnancy. If there is a medical need to weigh in at all, perhaps do it at your appointments and ask your provider not to tell you the number. This means they can know whether the figures suggest a need for intervention (e.g. if you were quite underweight and are perhaps not gaining enough to support you and baby), but at the same time, you don’t have the mental pressure of stressing over your weight.
My weight gain is more/less than I expected and I’m worried my baby is going to be big/small!
Tracking your weight gain actually doesn’t really help with knowing how baby is developing. It can be very normal to lose weight in the first trimester for women who struggle with morning sickness, for example, but meanwhile baby is growing and thriving. A more helpful measurement for tracking baby’s growth is the fundal height measurement, which your midwife will take at every appointment from about 20 weeks. This measures the height of your uterus from your pubic bone to the top of the uterus, and the measurement in centimetres is expected to be about the same as the number of weeks pregnant you are. Again, there can be some variation, but if it’s the same midwife measuring each time she will measure in the same way and it will be clear if the fundal height is increasing at a normal rate or else much faster or slower than expected. An unexpected measurement could warrant further investigation to be sure baby is thriving.
For example, if my fundal height was matching my weeks of pregnancy up till 32 weeks, but then at my 36 week checkup it was measuring only 33cm, I would be keen to do some follow-up on that (probably via ultrasound) to see if baby was measuring normally for 36 weeks or if perhaps there was some issue with the placenta and baby was no longer getting the nourishment they needed to grow at the expected rate.
What symptoms am I feeling?
I’ve had a bit of back pain again this week but thankfully not too bad. I am not really surprised, with the amount of growth happening in my uterus!
How has baby been developing this week?
My baby is probably around 44-46 cm and 2.4-2.9kg. By now he’ll be losing his wrinkles as the layer of fat under the skin is growing. Besides important lung development, one of the key changes in the last few weeks of pregnancy is that baby develops more fat resources which they use as “backup'“ in the first days outside the womb, while they’re still working with mum to develop her milk supply (in the case of breastfeeding).
What am I doing to prepare?
This week’s shopping list included newborn nappies and postpartum pads. It won’t be too many weeks longer now till we’ll be needing them! With this being our third there isn’t much we really need to organise, though I do still need to wash the newborn clothes. We’ve had quite a few baby boy clothes passed on from relatives so haven’t needed to buy anything in that department. Apart from that... I need to clear all the stuff I've got in the bassinet (it makes for handy storage!) and prep it for baby, and get the capsule in the car.
And that’s it for this week! 🌿💛
[Image credit: Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash]