Nine months can feel like a lonnnnggggg time when you’re waiting to meet your baby, but have you ever wondered how your little sprout is passing the time in there?
By week 30 of your pregnancy you will probably be feeling so many kicks that you’ll begin to wonder if you are incubating a small Conor McGregor.
In your third trimester you will become more adept at telling the difference between elbows and hiccups. If you’re lucky you might even see the outline of a little hand pressed up against your skin.
Here are 7 ways that your baba is passing the time – they get up to more than you might think…
1. Hiccuping
Baby’s hiccups feel like quick, repetitive bursts of movement. You might notice your bump ‘jumping’ from the end of your first trimester onwards. Although experts aren’t exactly sure what causes in-utero hiccuping, it is generally believed that as amniotic fluid enters and exits baba’s lungs, their diaphragm contracts and hiccups result.
2. Swallowing
From the start of the second trimester, your baba will be practicing swallowing with the help of the amniotic fluid surrounding them. Impressively, he or she will recycle the full amount of fluid every few hours by peeing out what they swallow and then starting all over again. Your amniotic fluid also exposes bubs to different tastes and research has even shown that babies will drink more amniotic fluid if it tastes sweet.
3. Kicking
Most mamas-to-be will experience their first little kick or squirm somewhere between weeks 16 and 26. However, the position of the placenta can mean you don’t feel as much – if it’s at the front (called an anterior placenta) it can muffle the movements and trick you into thinking you have a very quiet baba in there.
4. Thumb-sucking
Babies are frequently spotted on ultrasound sucking their thumbs from about 20 weeks onwards. Developmental researchers have noticed that, even at this early stage, babies show a preference for particular hands; those that suck their right thumb rather than their left are more likely to be right handed children.
5. Listening
Babies begin to respond to sound from the 20 week point. Loud sounds can give your baby a fright and cause them to move about. Closer to the end of the pregnancy, they will be able to discriminate between different voices, languages, and even individual speech sounds. It has also been shown that newborns can recognise music they heard while still in the womb.
6. Looking
Your little spud will begin to move his or her eyes in the 14th week of pregnancy and will open their eyes around week 24 or 25. If you put a torch on your belly they can even follow its light, and they will often turn away from the bright flash of an ultrasound scan.
7. Dreaming
Researchers have noted rapid eye movements in the last trimester, similar to those adults display when they are dreaming. Numerous studies have indicated that babies do enter an REM sleep stage and have little dreams. Dreaming about meeting their beautiful mamas no doubt…
