Who Knows How Big This Baby Is?

This week, hubby and I met with obstetrician #2, who thought I was measuring completely normal for this stage of the pregnancy - within a centimeter of normal. Obstetrician #1 had thought the baby seemed quite large - so large that she ordered an ultrasound to have a look at the baby - but this second doctor thought the baby was right on track and seemed normal-sized. This is weird, since both were measuring fundal height!

From what I've read, this kind of mixed message about a baby-to-be's size isn't unusual. Strangely, predicting the size of a baby before it's born is something the modern medical establishment can't yet do very accurately. According to Marjorie Greenfield, the obstetrician who wrote The Working Woman's Pregnancy Book, the most accurate way to predict the baby's size is for the mother to predict the size by comparison to her previous pregnancies. If she hasn't had any previous pregnancies, though, this method is obviously out. The next most accurate way is for an experienced medical practitioner to examine the woman, and the least accurate way is by ultrasound measurements. But none of these methods are particularly accurate. So...who knows how big this baby is?

I do know that he's pretty active, though - he's kicking and punching and moving around all the time lately, which is exciting! (I wish there was some way to communicate to him that he could stand to do a little less kicking of the underside of my diaphragm, though, since that seems to be a favorite activity of his lately.) I'm going to start keeping a kick count chart soon, since it's good to have a baseline record of his activity.