You are 32 weeks and 2 days

Every 40 minutes, your baby swallows enough amniotic fluid to fill his stomach, before emptying it back into the amniotic sac.

54 days until your due date

Your baby is swallowing and recycling almost half a liter of amniotic fluid each day. As well as providing nutrients, especially protein, the fluid is important for healthy development of the gut. His sense of taste is now thought to be developed enough that he can detect spicy food you've eaten in the fluid he drinks.

Amniotic fluid doesn't enter the lungs; it travels down the esophagus into the stomach, where it's stored briefly. At this stage the stomach fills every 40 minutes, but from 35 weeks, as the stomach gets bigger, this slows to every 80 minutes. Muscle contractions move the fluid in waves into the small and then the large bowel. Along the way, water is reabsorbed, so only waste material, called meconium, reaches the colon, the last section of the large bowel.

Meconium builds up until the large bowel is completely full by birth. Babies don't usually pass it before birth, but do so soon after. It's made mainly of skin cells, lanugo hairs, and vernix, and it's greenish because it contains bilirubin, a breakdown product of red blood cells.

Good to know

Itchy skin

An itchy belly is common: as the skin stretches and thins it can become dry, and a moisturizing lotion can soothe it.

However, if you have severe itching on your abdomen or on the palms of your hands or soles of your feet, see your doctor. This can be a sign of obstetric cholestasis, a rare liver condition of pregnancy in which bile salts enter the bloodstream, making the skin (especially on the hands and feet) itchy, with no rash. It can also cause a vitamin K deficiency; vitamin K helps blood clot, so a deficiency raises the risk of bleeding for mother and baby. Medication to bind the bile salts and vitamin K supplements are effective, and some studies suggest early induction (at around 37 weeks) helps avoid complications. The condition clears after delivery, usually with no long-term liver damage.

Focus on

The birth: False alarms

In the next few weeks you may have one or two false alarms, especially with a first baby. They can come at any time of day or night and won't respect important meetings or deadlines.

It helps if you and your partner both learn the signs that labor may be starting. But if you're ever in doubt, contact your doctor to check rather than assuming labor hasn't started. She's very experienced with false alarms and won't mind hearing from you.

This is general information based on NHS guidance, not medical advice, and every pregnancy is different. Talk to your midwife or GP about anything that worries you. If your baby's movements slow down or change, or you have bleeding, severe pain or leaking fluid, call your maternity unit straight away. In an emergency, call 999.

Itchy skin

The birth: False alarms

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