Author: Veronica

Yesterday I had an antenatal doctors appointment, which was probably a good thing. I’d had bloody show the night before and early that morning, coupled with standard prelabour crampiness. Not really a huge surprise to me, given how large the baby had measured on ultrasound, regardless of dates.

It was, however, worrying to the doctor and after a quick ultrasound and head measurement (still measuring around 37 weeks), I was whisked off to the Pregnancy Assessment Centre to see if I was in labour.

I was not in labour. I knew I wasn’t in labour.

I told this to anyone who would listen to me, but apparently pregnant women might miss the fact that they’re in labour and require a machine to tell them instead. Go figure.

It wasn’t terrible, the beds in PAC are new, I had a book to read and they fed me lunch. The downside was of course that the medical staff needed to get up close and personal with my cervix, which was pronounced slightly dilated and “labour-y looking”. Those are the technical terms I’m led to believe.

More than 24 hours later, the bloody show has eased, making way for the slow loss of my mucus plug and the increasing intensity of my braxton hicks contractions.

The doctors won’t adjust my due date, despite my certainty that my dating scan was botched in the first place. Despite my retroverted uterus (which studies have shown can cause incorrect dates in ultrasounds in the first trimester). Despite the fact that there is no good reason for my baby to be measuring 37 weeks, except for the probable chance that she is actually more cooked than they want to believe.

This seems silly to me, as they panic and treat me like a preterm labour risk, when I’m pretty sure this is just regular prelabour and that I’ll birth a perfectly healthy term baby.

And yes, I know that ultrasounds can be incorrect. I know that they are often wrong and no, I’m not panicking about the fact that she is “big for dates”. You don’t need to reassure me of these things. I trust my body to birth this baby when we are both ready, regardless of size.

I’m just frustrated at the doctors inability to listen to what I am saying. Funnily enough, I am the one who inhabits my body and I am in the unique position of being the only one who knows exactly what my body is saying.

Strange how that works, isn’t it?

Either way, despite ultrasounds and dates, this baby will be here when she is ready, and we are now after a little bit of panicking, ready for her arrival.

Which is nice, really.

If you’re a long time reader, you’ll know that I don’t grow big babies. Isaac was perfectly sized and born at 7lbs, but they spent a bit of time worrying that he was “small for dates”. The same thing happened with Amy, and we were told to expect a 5lb baby – only she was perfectly sized by the time she was born too, a lovely 7lb6oz.

The defining thing here is that the babies I grow, while a great size for me, measure small against the percentile charts. Both children have measured anywhere between 2 and 6 weeks behind for my pregnancies.

So you can imagine my slight bafflement when this baby measured around 10 days ahead of dates at my 20 week scan. No matter I thought, she’ll be here when she’s here.

However.

I had a growth scan today, booked during my 12 week appointment, due to a sub-chorionic haemorrhage and my previous history of small-for-dates babies. They just wanted to check that everything was going well and that she was nicely gestating away.

Imagine my shock when we discovered that at apparently 33 weeks, my daughter is measuring 37 weeks at her head and 36.3 weeks on average. Her estimated weight is just a little under what Isaac was when he was born.

I do not grow big babies.

Not at all.

Not in the slightest.

Nor do I have gestational diabetes and the constant nausea has meant that my diet is super healthy too. My total weight gain is 2.5kg so far (I did lose 5 kg in the first trimester though and have gained that back).

If you’re new here, I had a miscarriage before falling pregnant with this baby. In fact, I was pregnant again so quickly that there is doubt that I miscarried the entire pregnancy. I had blood tests done afterwards, but only to confirm that my HCG levels were dropping, not that they’d gone to zero – and the ultrasound I had done, she freely admitted that my uterus was too full of blood to see much of anything.

For the actual miscarriage, I didn’t bleed for very long, or very heavily. My periods were worse, and hurt more too, which confused me a bit – I expected the bleeding from a miscarriage to be heavier than a normal period. Then I experienced early pregnancy symptoms 10 days later, with a positive pregnancy test soon thereafter.

So, there is now a lot of confusion about my early dates. I’ve been pretty convinced that I’m further along than the doctors believe I am – based solely on how I felt in the very early weeks and when I got a positive test, plus how I measured at midwifery appointments.

I have a follow-up appointment at the High Risk Clinic on Wednesday, at which I expect to have to explain myself repeatedly and refuse to be booked in for a Caesarean.

In the meantime, I am having a minor panic about the fact that we now expect this baby relatively soon and that I have very little time to Get Things Ready.

Suddenly, the prelabour symptoms I’ve been having this past week don’t seem quite so ridiculously early.

Here we are, counting down the days until this babe decides she can make her home outside of my uterus, rather than spending all of her time headbutting my bladder and kicking my ribs.

I had a midwifery appointment on Tuesday, that confirms that at this point in my pregnancy, I am larger than I have been before, measuring 31 weeks. Shocking really, with both other children I was measuring 26 weeks at this point and everyone was getting a little twitchy about growth. This further shows that dates are probably inaccurate, as I’ve never measured on time or ahead for dates, ever. Not even in the early weeks of my pregnancies. I grow small babies, not large ones.

Of course, no body listens to me and they continue to make plans for ‘when you birth in 9 weeks’ rather than Nathan and I (who know how this story goes) who realise that we really need to have everything in place in the next six weeks or so.

Either way, she will arrive when she arrives and then I won’t need to argue my case with the doctors.

I have a growth scan booked for early Monday morning in any case, this was booked at 12 weeks when I was still showing signs of my early sub-chorionic bleed (that, incidentally, caused no problems or bleeding) and we’ll see how big she’s grown then. If the kicks are any indication, she is healthy and strong.

Occasional bursts of “HOLY FUCK I NEED TO ORGANISE THINGS” are starting – I’m medicating these with trashy books, chocolate and hot tea. Sadly, as much as I’d like to nest, I know that if I give into the urge I’ll get exhausted and that’s bad all around. Instead I’m imperiously demanding that Nathan do things for me. You can offer him your sympathies if you like, he’d probably appreciate them.

Really, that’s it. My pelvis hurts, my back hurts, my hips hurt and we’ve been stricken with a god awful cold so my throat feels like it’s full of razors, but we’re all good here.

How are you?