Week 24: Look ma, my ears can hear!

Fetal development in pregnancy week 24

~length
11.8 in | 30 cm

~weight
1.3 lbs | 590 g

It's another week full of exciting developments for your magical growing baby!
Just take a look at the checklist for this week: 1) ears: done; 2) fingernails: done; 3) (if you have a boy) testicles: taking their 3-4 day trip from the abdominal wall to the scrotum; and 4) lungs walls: secreting “surfactant”.
What’s surfactant? It's basically what it sounds like: a surface-activated fat that helps your baby's little lungs inflate (where inflate = fill with air not get more expensive for no understandable reason).
In the meantime, your submerged baby is still breathing in their amniotic fluid (and a bit of pee), preparing and rehearsing their lungs for an oxygen-filled life outside the womb.
By the end of this week, your wee womb-squatter will be weighing in at a whopping 2 lbs and 14 inches long.
All this new weight means your tiny baby is actually starting to fill out their skin, but they're not anywhere near their adorable fat-baby potential.
Most of the fetal “filling out” is coming up in that long awaited (and slightly dreaded?) third trimester. Woo-hoo! Get ready!