Skip to content

Stages of Pregnancy

Increase font size  Decrease font size  Default font size 
You are here:    Home arrow Details arrow Third Trimester
Third Phase
Written by Barbara Lurie   

The Third Trimester

This is the last of the three stages of pregnancy.  Some would refer to this as the home stretch.  There will be a lot of changes in you and your baby.  These are the last months when your baby is becoming fully formed. 
You will also experience some interesting medical side effects because of the pregnancy.  At this time, you should start taking any classes involved in the process.  Childbirth classes will teach you about what happens on the big day.  They will also teach you relaxation and breathing techniques that will help you relax when you are going through labor.  If you are planning on breastfeeding your baby, you will also want to take breastfeeding classes.  This aspect of raising your child is actually more complicated than you might expect.  The classes will teach you how to take care of your baby using this method.  

In the seventh month of your pregnancy, your baby will start to get much larger.  They will weight double what they weighed in the sixth month of the process.  Instead of one and a half pounds, they will weigh more like three pounds.  They will also be much longer than they were, now reaching a length of about fifteen inches.  In terms of reactions, your baby will now be able to open and close its eyes.  They can even follow a light with their eyes.  You can see how they are growing into a person inside of you.

The eighth month of the pregnancy, your baby is almost fully what it will be like when it is born.  It will now weigh around four and three quarters pounds.  It's lungs will also be fully developed and it will have a rounder, fuller body.  In the ninth, last month, your baby will end up as it will when it is born.  Although this can vary, they will generally be around nineteen inches in length and seven pounds or so in weight.  

Your comfort level will be much smaller in the last trimester.  You will likely feel as though you just want to get the baby out.  Your stomach will be much larger than you remember, and will getting ever bigger by the day.  You may also notice that the temperature of your skin will be much higher.  This will happen in the last few months of the pregnancy.  You may also find that your blood pressure is decreasing and your limbs are swelling.  This is all a normal part of the last trimester of the stages of pregnancy.  

At this point, your doctor will likely want to raise the frequency of your visits.  Unlike earlier in the pregnancy where you visited the doctor once each month, they may ask you to come in every other week instead.  This is because you are getting so close to the actual pregnancy.  They want to keep an eye on how you and your baby are doing through this process.  Some women end up with complications during this time.  You may even experience false labor.  This happens when you think that you are going through labor and going to have a baby.  In reality, you may still have a few more weeks until giving birth.  While this is a scary prospect, it happens to a lot of women.  

At the end of your third trimester, it is now time to give birth to your child.  Childbirth marks the end of your pregnancy, but the beginning of a whole new, amazing period in your life.  You will notice that everything will change in your life.  You will have a new, tiny person to take care of.  It will be worth all of the trouble that you incurred throughout those nine months.
 
< Prev   Next >