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.

End of the Second Trimester

Haven't updated in a while, as hubby and I recently made a cross-country move and we're just getting caught up from that. I'm now in the process of looking for a doctor or midwife here in my new town - I'm planning to meet with 3 or 4 before we decide - and of trying to make some kind of general plan for having this baby.

Met with obstetrician #1 today, and there's good news and bad news.
The good news: Baby's already in head-down position. The doc said he might move again, but he probably won't. I can't imagine there's room for all sorts of spinning or flipping maneuvers in there anymore.
The bad news: The baby (or rather, my uterus) is surprisingly big. Due to the fact that my first two trimesters of medical records are from Canada, where they put the month and day in random orders when they write out dates numerically, the doctor had to do a double-take to see if the first ultrasound was done on October 11 or November 10. When she realized it was the latter, and that I was a month less pregnant than she thought, she was very surprised by the fundal height measurement and she ordered up an ultrasound to check on fetal size. I've felt gigantic lately (and think I look much larger than a similarly pregnant friend), so I can't say that I'm surprised, but that's a bummer. I'm pretty sure about when the baby was conceived, so this definitely won't make birthing this kid any easier! The ultrasound is in two weeks, so I guess we'll find out then if it's a big baby and/or too much amniotic fluid or something like that. I'll also have a gestational diabetes test before then.