The Baby at 34 Weeks

Rising Doughboy (or Girl)

Your baby could be as tall as 20 inches right now and about five pounds. Need a visual? Hold a five-pound bag of flour in your arms and imagine it's your soon-to-be-born baby (cradle it, and you'll only get strange looks in the baking aisle). Then stack three such bags one on top of the other (and get ready for some more strange looks, maybe from the same clerks who saw you grinning and holding that one-pound box of sugar a few weeks ago). That's how tall your baby is now. (Now go bake some oatmeal raisin cookies with all that flour!)

If your little doughboy is, well, a boy, then you'll be pleased to know that this week his testicles are making their way down from his abdomen to his scrotum. (Some baby boys — three to four percent — are born with undescended testicles, but they usually make the trip down sometime before the first birthday.)

Your baby's fingernails now reach the end of the fingertips and may even curl over the tip, making a manicure one of the first things you'll need to do for your little bundle.

A Very Close Call ... and the Grace of God

This weekend Liz and I were en route to Albuquerque and highway traffic was zipping along at 75 mph (or more). Traffic then came to an immedate stop and most of us drivers were caught completely off-guard. Tires were screeching and smoking and cars were veering off the road in an attempt to maintain control.

As if all that wasn't scary enough, I looked into my rearview mirror only to see a mini-van coming up behind me ... FAST ... and he wasn't slowing down.

I recall my immediate thought was, "I'm pregnant, my sister is in the car, and Bella is home alone." I quickly moved my car onto the highway shoulder to get us out of the way. The van went barreling past me on my left, and then had to swerve to avoid hitting the car that was in front of me. Had I not moved to the right, we'd have been hit behind with full-force, and been thrown into the car in front of us.

Now that was scary!

God definitely had his hands on us: What if I hadn't looked into the rear view mirror at that exact moment to see that van? What if the van had swerved to the right at the same time I did ... or what if there was already a car on the shoulder (I didn't have time to look before moving over).

So many other ways that situation could have played out. But we were safe and so were others who were in the immediate vicinity.

Praise God! (how could we not??)

Jennifer