Pregnancy week 23

Your baby at week 23

Hearing is developing — your voice, heartbeat and favourite sounds become familiar companions.

Your body at week 23

The bump grows visibly. Backache, leg cramps or mild swelling may appear. Baby's kicks become part of the day.

Garbh Sanskar practice for week 23

Baby can hear now — read stories aloud, hum, or chant softly. Invite your partner to speak to the bump.

This week's stories

• Day 155: Shabari's Berries

  In week twenty-three, your body is doing a quiet, daily preparation no one will applaud — tasting, choosing, setting aside. Shabari's small kitchen of berries is the same kitchen you are keeping inside you.

• Day 156: The Boy Who Did Not Move

  Week twenty-three, and the small one inside you is learning the meaning of staying. They are practising, every day, the patience of growing. Tonight's story is for the part of them that is learning to be still.

• Day 157: The Hare in the Moon

  Week twenty-three, and your body is in the giving season — quietly, every minute, handing over warmth and food and breath without being asked. Tonight's story is for the part of you that has begun to wonder if it has anything left.

• Day 158: The Bread of Bhai Lalo

  Week twenty-three, and the small one inside you is being built from what you eat, what you hear, what you let near you. Tonight's story is about how the same food can be two different things, depending on the hand that gives it.

• Day 159: The Mountain on a Finger

  Week twenty-three, and your body is becoming a roof. It is doing the steady, unseen work of holding up a sky for someone very small. Tonight's story is for that quiet roof.

• Day 160: The Reed That Remembered

  Week twenty-three, and the small one inside you is being cut, gently, from the great soft reed-bed they came from, in order to become the particular flute that is them. Their first cries will not all be hunger. Some will be remembering.

• Day 161: The Cup Mira Drank

  Week twenty-three, and your body is teaching the small one a quiet, world-changing thing — that one can receive what life hands over without losing oneself in the receiving. Tonight's story is about that quiet hand.