Week 29 and Belly Touching...

I've always heard that once you get pregnant, random people will come up and touch your belly. Now, I believed this, but wasn't sure of the extent of the weirdness. This past week, I experienced my first belly rub from a total stranger. Now, I don't mind people I know touching my belly...and pretty much everyone I know has at least asked before they touched. I was at a wedding this past weekend and a complete stranger walks by me, rubs my belly, say "And there's going to be a baby" and keeps walking. That was it. So weird. On another belly touching note, I learned about a hispanic tradition of good luck from rubbing bellies today. One of my student's parents came up to me today very concerned because I was absent Friday (for the aforementioned wedding) and asked if I was sick. I assured her I was not, and she was relieved. She said she got worried because she saw me on Thursday at our Valentine's Day party, and didn't rub my belly...and then I wasn't there on Friday. Apparently in the Spanish culture, it is bad luck for mom and baby if you don't rub mom's belly - so she was worried she had brought me bad luck! Such a sweet, concerned mom!

Read on if you're interested in baby's development this week:

WEEK 29

If you’ve been feeling butterflies moving around in your belly, it’s not just your run-of-the-mill pre-birth performance anxiety. No, it’s your amazing baby with a case of the hiccups: a fairly common occurrence at this point resulting from practicing breathing for their big birthday. In addition, to getting a round of butterfly-like hiccups, your little swimmer has arduously managed to accumulate enough baby fat to account for nearly 3.5% of their overall body weight. Yeah, compared to we adults, it’s not a lot, but when they’re little like that—it’s certainly a healthy (and warming) accomplishment in its way. Another fantastic accomplishment: your baby's spleen is now in charge of hematopoiesis—the 10 dollar name for the process involved in building up certain important blood components. Another fantastic-accomplishment: your little monkey has been peeing into their amniotic sac for a little while now (this is why potty training takes a while) and if you didn’t know, actually swallows it along with the rest of the amniotic fluid. Although the concept is nasty, their urine is sterile and as part of the amniotic fluid base, is replaced several times throughout the day. So if you didn’t know before, now you can tell people, that yes, you drank your own urine—you were still in the womb, but nonetheless, you’ve been there.