Your third trimester at a glance

The third trimester — week 28 to the birth — is the home stretch: the trimester of big kicks, small bladders, hospital bags by the door and a due date that somehow feels both far too close and impossibly far away. Here’s the lay of the land.

Your baby spends these weeks doing two main jobs: growing (roughly tripling in weight, from around a kilo at 28 weeks to the three-and-a-bit of a typical newborn) and finishing — maturing lungs and brain, practising breathing movements, opening their eyes, and laying down the fat that turns skinny fetus into chubby newborn. Somewhere in here they’ll also settle head-down ready for the exit; most have done so by around 36 weeks, and if yours hasn’t, your team will talk you through the options.

Your appointments step up — roughly fortnightly from 28 weeks and weekly from 36. Expect the whooping cough booster if you haven’t had it, a check for anaemia, the Group B strep swab around 36 weeks, and plenty of measuring and belly-prodding as your team tracks growth and position. If anything about your pregnancy needs a closer eye, extra growth scans usually happen in this stretch too.

Movements matter most now. Your baby’s pattern — when they’re lively, what wakes them — should stay recognisably theirs right up to and including labour. Babies do not slow down “because they’ve run out of room”; that’s a myth worth unlearning. If the movements change, slow, or you’re just not sure, call your maternity unit that day — never wait until morning, and never rely on a home doppler for reassurance.

Your body is doing heavy work, and it shows: breathlessness (a crowded diaphragm), heartburn, swollen ankles by evening, pelvic pressure, Braxton Hicks that mean business, and sleep that fragments just when you want to bank it. Keep sleeping on your side, and be a little kind to yourself about pace — third-trimester you is carrying a workload that deserves rests, pillows and shameless outsourcing. Two symptom red flags to act on quickly: sudden swelling of face or hands, severe headache or vision changes (possible pre-eclampsia — same-day call), and itching without a rash, especially palms and soles (worth checking for cholestasis).

The prep list is shorter than the nesting urge suggests: pack the hospital bag by around 36 weeks, install the car seat (and have it checked), learn the signs of labour and when your hospital wants the call, sort out who’s on standby for lifts, other kids or pets, and stock the freezer if cooking soothes you. Antenatal classes usually finish in this window, and your birth preferences are worth writing down — lightly, in pencil, as a conversation-starter for your team.

Emotionally, the final weeks are their own odd country — big waves of excitement, boredom, impatience and what have we done can all visit in a single afternoon, and the last fortnight can feel longer than the whole second trimester. That’s universal. So is going past your due date: a due date is the middle of a window, not a deadline, and your team will talk you through the plan if your baby overstays.

Any bleeding, fluid leaking, regular painful tightenings before 37 weeks, changed movements, or that persistent something’s-not-right feeling: call your maternity unit, day or night. For everything else — the aches, the insomnia, the seventeenth trip to the loo — you’re nearly there. The next chapter is the one with the baby in it.