final journey - changing body

If your baby's head has started to engage, or settle into the pelvis your bump will appear to be lying lower in your abdominal cavity. There is sometimes quite a noticeable change in your body shape and you may hear people remarking that you have "started to drop".

This does not mean that you are about to go into labour and literally drop your baby; you may still have several weeks to do. it is merely an indication that your uterus and your baby are both getting prepared for the labour ahead. As I mentioned earlier, it this is your first baby, engagement is likely to occur sooner rather than later. This is because the muscles of your uterus are tight because they have not been stretched by a previous labour and so are able to exert more pressure on the baby's head. Also, the arrangement of the pelvis bones is slightly altered after a previous vaginal delivery and this may delay engagement.

HOW YOU MAY FEEL PHYSICALLY

During these last few weeks of your pregnancy, BRAXTON HICKS' contractions will be a constant reminder of the fact that labour could start at any time. True labour contractions are much stronger and more painful, but if you are in any doubt about what you are experiencing you should always seek advice. Your doctor or midwife will encourage you to come into the maternity unit and be checked over, rather than stay at home feeling anxious. This is not the time to be ignoring abdominal pain and hoping that it will go away. Nor is it the time to worry that you cannot bother your midwife again, because you have already called her three time this weel with the same symptoms. It does not matter how many false alarms there are, it is essential that uterine pain is always investigated prompty and carefully.

However much you are trying to rest at this stage, you will probably still be feeling tired because you are unlikely to be getting enough of the continuous, uninterrupted sleep that you need to restore your mental and physical energy. Good-quality sleep involves cycles of four different stages from light sleep to deep sleep followed by REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, which is when you dream. if you are woken during any of these stages, the sleep cycle goes back to stage one when you fall asleep again. As a result, you miss out on the all-important deep sleep and REM stages and wake feeling poorly refreshed. Even if you manage to doze and sleep for quite long stretches of time, the repeated lack of good-quality sleep will mean that you become progressively more weary and exhausted.