23 Weeks

This week our babies should weigh about as much as a large mango -- just over a pound. (Length: more than 11 inches.)
I'll be turning on the radio and swaying to the music. With her sense of movement well developed by now, our babies can now feel me dance. Blood vessels in her lungs are developing to prepare for breathing, and the sounds that our baby's increasingly keen ears pick up are preparing her for entry into the outside world. Loud noises that become familiar now — such as the dogs barking or the roar of the vacuum cleaner — probably won't faze her when she hears them outside the womb. The bones located in the baby's middle ear are starting to form by pregnancy week 23 and the babies are continuing to fill out and look more and more proportional. Fat production is in overdrive at this point (for the baby, not me, thank goodness! The babies will basically double in weight over the next four weeks!