Thursday, April 15, 2010

I am a pretty visual guy. I am also a numbers guy. Last week while I was sitting in a clinic waiting to see a patient I had with me a growth chart for fetal weight while still in utero. The idea is that you look up your weeks along in pregnancy and reference it to a chart that tells you approximately how much the fetus should weigh, how long it is, and a few other vital statistics. Just looking at the numbers I could tell there was a great curve, but I just had to plot it out to see it.

So here it is. Below is a chart that plots weight in lbs. over weeks in the pregnancy.


It is a rather logarithmic curve, not a linear one, and as would be expected, near the beginning of the pregnancy the fetus weighs almost nothing. In fact, it weighs less than a pound until around week 23 out of 40. But somewhere around week 25 to 27, the weight just explodes, the gain accelerates and takes off; the very nature of a logarithmic curve.

In the version below, I think you can guess where Jess is on the graph.



So, being the amazing husband that I am, I pointed this out to her. I will let you guess what her reaction was.

Get ready.

5 comments:

Rachel said...

"I'm hungry!"

yes?

katie said...

Well, my personal reaction was "if the baby is only 2 pounds right now where did the other 25 come from?!?" But from the 20 week pics of Jessica, she's not having that dilemma. So I'm curious what she thought of your beautiful graph.

Jake and Jess said...

i thought "holy crap! where is this little one going to go if I am just at the beginning of this whole flow chart!?!?"

cory said...

being a visual guy myself, i really appreciate this graph!!

katie said...

You are the cutest pregnant woman. It looks like your body stays the same except for the belly (and in your case, as you've mentioned, a couple other items...). My body seems to think that every area must get chubby to support this new little life. Rich is now looking at me saying the usual 7 month comments like, "I think you might be due earlier than we think." (It never happens.) And my personal favorite, "You look as big as you did when you delivered last time." (Oh, but it will start spreading to the sides any day now.) Rich questioned the maternity swimsuit yesterday, unwisely wondering how much water I would displace. (He made up for it with a foot rub.)