35 weeks pregnant

How big is your baby at 35 weeks?

About the size of a honeydew melon — around 46.2 cm (18.2 in) head to heel. Your baby is getting chubbier, which is not cosmetic: that fat is what will hold their temperature steady once they are out.

A note on the numbers: these are head-to-heel lengths. The NHS gives one for every week of the third trimester but no weekly weight — the only weight it publishes in this range is at 41 weeks, where the average baby is around 3 to 4 kg (6 lb 10 oz to 8 lb 13 oz). It is cramped in there, but the NHS is specific that you should feel movements as strongly and as regularly as you have in previous weeks.

What's developing this week

Fat is being laid down under the skin, the lungs are nearly ready, and the sucking and swallowing that will run feeding are being rehearsed. If you have spotted yellow stains in your bra, that is colostrum, the early milk rich in antibodies. Some people make it months before the birth and some never notice it; neither predicts anything about feeding. Around 3 to 5 days after the birth your milk comes in and your breasts get bigger again, so get a feeding bra measured with growing room.

What you might feel

Sore ribs are the week-35 speciality, and usually it is simply a head-down baby with their feet in the wrong place. But the NHS attaches a caution worth reading twice: if the pain is really bad, or under your ribs, talk to your midwife or doctor, in case it is a sign of pre-eclampsia. Pain just below the ribs sits on the NHS pre-eclampsia list alongside a severe headache painkillers do not shift, blurred vision or flashing lights, sudden swelling of the face, hands or feet, stubborn heartburn, vomiting and feeling very unwell.

The rest is the third-trimester standard: Braxton Hicks, broken sleep, backache, indigestion, leg cramps, swollen hands and feet, dizziness and piles.

Movements do not slow down at the end

The NHS says it on this week's page in plain terms: if the movements change or stop, talk to your doctor or midwife, or call 111. Call your midwife or maternity unit immediately if your baby is moving less than usual, if you cannot feel them moving, or if their usual pattern has changed — do not wait until the next day, do not wait for your next appointment, and call even in the middle of the night. Those are the NHS's own words, and maternity triage is staffed 24 hours a day for exactly this call.

Babies do not move less at the end because they have run out of room. The RCOG says movements tend to increase until about 32 weeks then stay roughly the same, and that you should feel your baby move right up to and during labour. Nor do you need to count: the NHS says "you do not need to count the number of kicks or movements you feel each day", and RCOG Green-top Guideline No. 57, second edition, reviewed 29 April 2026, found insufficient evidence to recommend counting using specified numbers. What matters is a change from your baby's own pattern.

Tommy's reports that 55% of women who had a stillbirth had noticed their baby's movements slow down or stop and had not reported it. Our movements counter records what normal looks like for your baby, but no number on it means everything is fine — and a home Doppler is worse: the NHS says hearing a heartbeat does not mean your baby is well.

Is 35 weeks pregnant 8 months or 9 months?

Week 35 is the last week of month 8. Month 9 starts next week, and on the most common mapping month 9 runs all the way to your due date.

There is no official weeks-to-months map, and a calendar month averages 4.3 weeks rather than 4, so 40 weeks is a little over nine months. The usual mapping:

• Month 1 — weeks 1 to 4
• Month 2 — weeks 5 to 8
• Month 3 — weeks 9 to 13
• Month 4 — weeks 14 to 17
• Month 5 — weeks 18 to 22
• Month 6 — weeks 23 to 27
• Month 7 — weeks 28 to 31
• Month 8 — weeks 32 to 35
• Month 9 — weeks 36 to 40

Your maternity team counts in weeks and days. Our weeks to months converter shows both mappings.

What's happening at your appointments around now

There is no routine NHS appointment at 35 weeks — the schedule runs 34, 36, 38, 40 and 41 — so this is a week for conversations rather than checks. Many people start maternity leave around now; others work to the birth, and the NHS's line is to do what feels right. Two things to raise if they have not come up: group B strep, and how you want to handle pain in labour.

Group B strep, and why the UK does not screen everyone

Group B strep is an ordinary gut and vaginal bacterium carried by 2 to 4 in every 10 women in the UK, according to the RCOG. Carrying it is harmless to you, it occasionally makes a newborn seriously ill, and most of those infections are preventable. Around 1 in every 1,750 newborn babies in the UK and Ireland is diagnosed with early-onset group B strep: averaged across a UK month, 43 develop it, 38 recover fully, 3 survive with disability, 2 die.

The NHS does not routinely screen everyone. You should be offered antibiotics through a drip in labour if group B strep has been found in your urine, vagina or rectum this pregnancy, or if you have previously had a baby affected by it. If your waters break after 37 weeks and you are known to carry it, you will be offered induction straight away. Risk is higher if your baby is preterm, if you have a temperature in labour, or if your waters break more than 24 hours before your baby is born.

Pain relief: a menu, not a single choice

The NHS is unusually direct: "You do not need to pick just one of them." The options are self-help and relaxation, gas and air, an injection of pethidine or diamorphine, an epidural, a water birth, a TENS machine, and complementary therapies.

The caveats: gas and air works quickly but may make you feel sick and may not remove the pain; pethidine lasts 2 to 4 hours but is unsuitable late in labour, because it can interfere with your baby's feeding and breathing; an epidural needs an anaesthetist so is not available everywhere, could slow labour and make a forceps birth more likely, and does not always work — around 1 in 8 people who have one need other pain relief too; TENS may help early but not later; and for complementary therapies there is no strong evidence they work.

Write your preferences down and hold them loosely; the NHS adds that you can change your mind on the day. Our birth plan generator walks the same decisions.

When to call your midwife or doctor

These do not wait until morning.

Emergency now: 999 in the UK and Ireland, 911 in the US and Canada, 000 in Australia, 111 in New Zealand

• You think your baby is coming now and you have a strong urge to push
• You have a seizure, or you collapse

Call your midwife or maternity unit immediately, whatever the hour

• Your baby is moving less than usual, or the pattern has changed
• Your waters break — and again if the fluid is smelly, green or bloodstained
• Any vaginal bleeding
• You are less than 37 weeks pregnant and think you might be in labour — regular tightenings, period-type pains, a gush or trickle of fluid, or unusual backache
• Any contraction lasting longer than 2 minutes, or 6 or more contractions in every 10 minutes
• A severe headache painkillers do not shift, blurred vision or flashing lights, pain just below the ribs, sudden swelling of your face, hands or feet, vomiting or feeling very unwell — the NHS pre-eclampsia symptoms
• Severe itching at night, a temperature above 37.5C with no cold or flu symptoms, or persistent stomach pain
• You feel that something is wrong, without being able to say what

You do not need to be sure — units would rather see you twice than too late.