24 Weeks Pregnant: The Week Your Baby Answers Back

Last week, your baby's lungs began getting ready to breathe. This week, something even more wonderful happens between the two of you. Your baby starts to answer.

Welcome to week twenty-four. After months of you talking, singing, and wondering, your baby's hearing is now sharp enough to respond to the sound of you. And in between, your baby is sleeping deeply, eyes flickering, in a way that raises one of the loveliest questions in all of pregnancy. Let me show you.

Your baby is starting to answer you

Do you remember, a few weeks ago, I asked you to start talking to your baby? This is the week it can start to pay off.

Your baby has been hearing your voice for some time now, muffled and warm through your body. But this week, their hearing and their brain are joined up enough that your baby begins to respond to it. You might be talking, or singing, or laughing, and feel a sudden kick. You might put on a favourite song and feel your baby go still, as if listening. You might speak softly at the end of a long day and feel them settle.

After all these months of one-way love, of talking into the quiet with no reply, your baby begins, in the only way they can, to answer you back. It is the very first back-and-forth of your whole relationship. The first hint that, in there, someone is not just hearing you, but starting to know you.

Your baby may be dreaming

Here is a thought to sit with this week. Your baby may be dreaming.

When your baby sleeps now, and they sleep a great deal, they spend most of that time in a stage called REM, short for rapid eye movement. It is the very same stage in which you dream, when the mind is busy and the eyes flick and dart about behind closed lids. And that is exactly what your baby's eyes are doing in there, flickering away beneath their still-sealed eyelids.

Does your baby truly dream? And if so, of what, having seen so little of the world yet? No one can really say, and perhaps no one ever will. But the machinery of dreaming is switched on and quietly running, this week, inside your baby. It is one of those tender little mysteries of pregnancy that I have never been able to stop wondering about.

A brain in overdrive

None of this would be possible without what is happening in your baby's head.

The brain is growing at a tremendous pace right now, adding cells and wiring up connections by the billion, its activity becoming steadily more organised and complex, edging closer to the patterns of a newborn's brain. Every kick in answer to your voice, every flicker of dreaming sleep, is a sign of that astonishing brain quietly coming online.

How big is my baby at 24 weeks?

Around thirty centimetres now, head to heel, and roughly six hundred grams. Your baby is filling out steadily, laying down fat, and the once see-through skin is slowly becoming more solid and opaque.

Long, strong, and growing more like the baby you will hold every single day.

What is happening in my body?

You are likely feeling strong, regular movement now, and you may start to notice your baby reacting to the world, going quiet at a loud noise, or kicking when you settle down to talk.

Somewhere around now and the next few weeks, you may also be offered a routine screening test for gestational diabetes. It is a very common part of pregnancy care, nothing to worry about in itself, and your midwife or doctor will talk you through exactly what is involved and when.

From Courtney. This is the week it can start to feel like a proper relationship, the first real back-and-forth. You say something, and your baby kicks. You put on a song, and they go still, or they dance. After months of one-way wondering, your baby begins, in their own way, to answer. With my own, I used to save up my news for the evenings, hand on my belly, telling them about my day and feeling them shift and roll in reply. And the thought that, in between, they were curled up dreaming, eyes flickering away behind closed lids, well, I never did get used to that one. Talk to your baby this week, mama. There is someone in there now who is starting to listen back.

The one thing to do this week

This week, try having a little chat with your baby and see if you get a reply. Pick a quiet moment when they are awake and wriggling, rest a hand on your bump, and talk, sing, or read aloud. Some mothers feel a kick or a shift in response, others do not feel anything in particular, and both are completely normal, so please do not read anything into it either way. And if you would like to, this is a lovely thing to let a partner, or a big brother or sister, join in with too.

And whenever you need to, rest. A chat with your bump is a perfectly good reason to sit yourself down for a while.

Coming up in week twenty-five

Next week, your baby's brain takes on a remarkable new shape. The once smooth surface begins to fold and wrinkle into the deep grooves of a true human brain, making room for all the thinking, feeling, and remembering still to come. Your baby grows rounder, stronger, and more responsive by the day.

Week twenty-five is where your baby's brain really begins to take shape. I will see you there.

Written by Courtney Garland, NICU nurse, lactation consultant and mother of four, and founder of The Mama Years. This is here to inform and reassure you. It is not a substitute for medical advice, so always follow the guidance of your own doctor or midwife.

The Mama Years. 2026.

References

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. (n.d.). How your fetus grows during pregnancy. https://www.acog.org/womens-health/faqs/how-your-fetus-grows-during-pregnancy

Cleveland Clinic. (2023). Fetal development: Stages of growth. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/7247-fetal-development-stages-of-growth

Mayo Clinic. (2025). Fetal development: The second trimester. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-by-week/in-depth/fetal-development/art-20046151

Merck Manual. (2024). Stages of fetal development (Consumer Version). https://www.merckmanuals.com/home/women-s-health-issues/normal-pregnancy/stages-of-fetal-development

The Mama Years is written by Courtney Garland, a NICU registered nurse and IBCLC lactation consultant, against the research. When the science is genuinely unsettled, she says so instead of guessing. Nothing here replaces the advice of the clinician looking after you.