Baby Bolin: 24 weeks

Baby Jeffrey growing steadily, gaining about a quarter of a pound since last week, when he was just over a pound.

Since he's almost a foot long, that makes a pretty lean figure, but his body is filling out proportionally and he'll soon put on more baby fat.

His skin is thin, translucent, and wrinkled, his brain is growing rapidly, and his taste buds are developing. His lungs are developing "branches" of the respiratory "tree" and cells that produce surfactant, a substance that helps the air sacs inflate easily.

How mom's life is changing:
The top of your uterus is now an inch or so above your belly button, which means it's about the size of a soccer ball. With your skin stretching, you may feel a little itchy now and then. If your skin is dry, keeping it well moisturized may help. Also, your eyes may be sensitive to light and feel gritty and dry. This is a perfectly normal pregnancy symptom known as dry-eye. To ease your discomfort, use an artificial tears solution to add moisture.

Most women will have a glucose screening test (also called a glucose challenge test or GCT) between 24 and 28 weeks. This test checks for gestational diabetes, a high-blood-sugar condition during pregnancy. Untreated, high blood sugar increases your risk for having a difficult vaginal delivery or needing a cesarean section because it causes your baby to grow overly fat, especially in his upper body. It also increases your baby's risk for complications like low blood sugar at birth. A positive result on your GCT test doesn't mean you have gestational diabetes, but it does mean that you should have the more involved glucose tolerance test (GTT) to find out.