The case of the mysteriously growing baby

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.