35 Weeks Pregnant: Group B Streptococcus

You are 35 weeks pregnant! Hello uterus! Your uterus is growing rapidly to keep up with baby and now reaches all the way from your pelvis up under your rib cage. Normally, when there isn’t a child crammed in that uterus, it fits nicely into your pelvis. Crammed in that uterus now is your baby, over 18 inches long and more than 5 pounds. Her kidneys and liver are completely developed to allow her to process waste products. From this point on, it’s all growing, growing, growing. She is, basically, ready to go. Just needs a bit of fattening up.

Goodbye sleeping! You are desperate for sleep, napping whenever your boss (or your toddler, depending on who’s running your life) isn’t looking. Go to bed. You need the sleep. You’re not lazy. You’re not out of shape. You’re pregnant. And if you think you’re having trouble sleeping now (what with the leg cramps, the gigantic stomach, the backache, the crazy nightmares and the realization you are only weeks away from giving birth), you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Here’s something gross to think about when you can’t sleep at night. Sometime between about 35 and 37 weeks your health care provider will take a quick swab of your nether regions (front and back) to check for a bacteria called Group B Streptococcus. Say that 10 times fast. GBS is fairly common and can rarely cause infection of the baby as she is born. Here are the stats: 15-40% of mommies have GBS. Fewer than 70% of those mommies will pass GBS to baby during childbirth. Of those babies who do acquire the bacteria, about 1-2% will develop an infection which can cause mild to severe health problems. Slim odds, but a bad infection if it does occur. But guess what? You live in the space age and man has invented antibiotics! If you test positive for GBS, you’ll be administered antibiotics when you go into labour. Easy peasy.

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Our pregnancy calendar is researched & written by our Pregnancy Editor, Dara Duff-Bergeron. Although she rocks, she is not a health care professional. It's just for entertainment purposes and any recommendations or information provided should not be used as a substitute for the real deal - a trained medical professional.

About the Author
Dara is a women’s fitness expert and a pre and postnatal specialist. Visit Dara at Belly Bootcamp (www.bellybootcamp.ca)

About the Author Posted by EMVA in Pregnancy Calendar on March 23, 2010 More from this author  |