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You are finally 34 weeks pregnant with twins or triplets and your due date is around the corner. Aren’t you happy? The thought of seeing your babies must be making you very anxious, but don’t panic. Take a few deep breaths and calm down. Your doctor will call you to carry out the checkups on a regular basis as well as will conduct numerous tests to ensure that your body is fine. These tests will help detect infections, if any, in this stage and would try to nip them in the bud, to keep the babies completely safe. While some specific tests might be conducted to check your babies for the presence of any defects, there would also be a bunch of symptoms of this final stage that would make their signs known to you pretty soon.
The Growth of the Babies At 34 Weeks
By conducting ultrasounds, your doctor will check the growth of your twins or triplets. He will see if their growth is as per the milestones or not. The chances of premature delivery are high at 34 weeks. Therefore, ensuring that your babies have put on the requisite amount of weight and continue to do so is highly essential.
Furthermore, doctors will keep a constant check on the positions of the babies. The ideal position would make it fine for you to go ahead with a normal delivery. However, if they are not in the correct position, the doctor would suggest for caesarean delivery.
Apart from the weight gain and the growth of the babies, their senses would also be constantly improving and getting better with their use. Their ability to hear things clearly will get better in the coming months. Therefore, any time your voice gets angrier or hateful, remember that your babies are listening to you and are just going to emulate their mother in every respect. In that case, always ensure you spend a lot of time conversing with your children. Singing to them would cause them to respond to you. This is a good sign of their growth since it shows you that their senses are functioning just as you expect them to. Frequently listening to calming songs and humming the same tunes to yourself will cause the babies to remember the music faintly and find themselves being calm when you play it back to them after they are born.
Kick tracking should continue through this week as well. You should indulge in it on a daily basis, which is how you would notice some variations in your children by this week. The frequency of kicks might start dropping or their intensity might reduce as well. This is a natural consequence of an increasing body size combined with a constricted space within the womb. Expect kicks to reduce but not stop altogether. You can encourage them to move by gently rubbing your tummy, too.
What is the Size of the Babies?
A nice ripe squash fruit is how large your twins or triplets will be inside your body by now. Their fat amount keeps on increasing, which reflects in their weight as well. Most babies would tend to weigh close to 2 kilograms by now, which leads to difficulty in carrying them around. Their length is approximately 43-45 centimetres hence they do not have much space in the uterus.
Common Bodily Changes
As a result of all the growth and development by the 34th week of pregnancy, body changes will start manifesting itself in various ways, which will be quite confusing as well as irritating for most women.
- By the time women complete 34 weeks of pregnancy, there is nothing that surprises them anymore. There are no new symptoms and even if there are, they all feel the same. However, there is one symptom that might catch you off-guard. At 34 weeks of pregnancy, your vision may start to get affected and things might seem blur. Quite frankly, there is no conclusive reasoning behind this symptom but many women have mentioned that this condition does exist. The latter months of the pregnancy tend to make this condition stronger. Since your hormones are all over the place and various nerves are being numbed, this symptom does have a possibility of occurring.
- Right from the initial stage of pregnancy, your feet may be bearing all the increasing weight of you and your twins or triplets in all its glory. But things will get difficult for your feet because of swelling, which makes it a challenge to keep your balance intact. Adapting to all these changes in themselves and your body can cause them to start aching and feel worn out. Lie down by raising your feet at a higher level to give them some rest.
- Feeling dead tired and exhausted wouldn’t be a novelty anymore. The more your pregnancy progresses in this final stage, the more you will feel fatigued and worn out. This time around, the exhaustion is not merely due to the hormones, but also due to the immense changes your body has been adapting to. You may even feel exhausted just by the thought of taking care of your babies. However, your energy will return once you deliver the children.
Symptoms of Twin Pregnancy At 34 Weeks
Whatever you experienced so far in your journey will resurface in the 34th week of your pregnancy. Most of it is a result of how you’ve adjusted to your new lifestyle, and the consequences will have to be borne by you.
- Despite numerous suggestions, there will always be times when you fail to adhere to a proper diet or stick to a meal plan that is good for you. The weight of your babies would be too much and you will feel the pressure on your intestine. Hence, one of the common symptoms of a twin pregnancy at this week is constipation and re-emergence of haemorrhoids. As constipation causes you to apply pressure on your bowels to poop, the blood vessels expand and form the haemorrhoids. To combat these symptoms, increase your fluid intake and fibre intake too. Any shortfall on that account can make all these symptoms a lot worse and frustrating, given your current condition.
- The 34th week of pregnancy can inevitably make most women feel like taking in a new breath of life, quite literally. At 34 weeks of pregnancy, your twins or triplets may descend lower towards the pelvis, combined with a change in the orientation. The moment babies have their heads turned towards your canal, the upper portion of the uterus reduces in size. This reduction instantly makes way for the lungs and the diaphragm to take up that space, causing them to return closer to their normal state. And as a result, your breathing would improve and can be a welcome change for many.
- As you approach your due date, your vigilance would be continuously tested due to the presence of Braxton Hicks contractions. Braxton Hicks contractions are a common symptom of pregnancy at 34 weeks. These can come out of nowhere and cause you to panic and get ready for labour, only to fade away within a few minutes and not return at all. These are fine but can wreak havoc on your moods, leading you to doubt whether you are having your babies now or is it a false alarm.
Twin Pregnancy – Belly At 34 Weeks
The weight of the twins at 34 weeks and even that of triplets will be extremely evident, given the fact that your belly will have a highly rounded and expanded shape in the region below your navel. Each kick of your twins or triplets could also increase your chances of acidity since their movement would now be quite close to the stomach.
Twin Pregnancy at 34 Weeks – Ultrasound
The ultrasound being conducted this week is yet another crucial one, where your doctor will check nearly all the areas that are necessary to ensure safe delivery. Many decisions regarding your birth process, right from choosing epidurals to other plans, would be finalised at this stage. Numerous tests would be conducted, with advanced ultrasounds, to observe your twins or multiples closely.
What To Eat
Your meal plan should continue just as it is going on, with a good focus on fibrous foods. In case your weight gain is beyond the healthy level, your doctor or your dietician may make specific alterations in your diet to help you control your weight quickly. This needs to be done while keeping the nutritive requirements of your babies in mind.
Pregnancy Care Tips
With your pregnancy coming close to completion, some quick tips can make the entire period easier for you.
Do’s
- Try and get registration done with a cord blood banking for the future needs of the babies.
- Make a contingency plan to handle your delivery if any unforeseen consequences arise.
Dont’s
- Avoid drinking coffee or tea along with your meals since they interfere with iron absorption.
- Don’t stick to wearing tight clothes which can make it difficult to move around.
What You Need To Shop For
Most of the items would have been procured already, but there are certain things that you can still buy:
- A nice maternity gown
- Breast pump to store your first milk
The focus on 34 weeks pregnant twins foetal development is all that concerns doctors at this stage. Once this is deemed to be on the right track, your delivery is free to proceed without any complications.
