Re: The Baby - Good News and Bad News

Let's start with the good news:

I saw the nutritionist this morning. It is the last appointment before the baby comes. She was very proud of me. I was able to manage my gestational diabetes. That means no insulin for this lady.

Even though I had some very high glucose levels every once in a while, my overall average kept the baby's and my weights in check. I've only gained 29 lbs. so far. That's so much better than the nearly 50 lbs. I've gained with the other pregnancies. And with all the walking to school to pick up Akiko that I've had to do the entire pregnancy, I do feel much more fit this time around than any other pregnancy.

She seems optimistic that my insulin will start regulating itself pretty soon after birth. Ideally, I'll keep with the diet in order to prevent developing Type 2 diabetes in the future. Honestly, it's something I do plan on doing for the most part, but I am looking forward to eating normal sugar and more carbs again. I don't plan on overdoing it, but cutting back on them as much and as drastically as I had to was really hard. I'm not stupid enough to gorge myself as soon as I've got the go ahead.

So, while it was stressful to deal with, and I'm not out of the woods yet, it was very pleasant news to get.

Now the bad news:

It's not horrible news, but it's not the kind of news you want to get when you're in the home stretch.

So, near the end of a pregnancy, a woman's belly usually measures, in centimeters, the same as how many weeks along she is. So, for a woman who is 36 weeks along, her belly will measure at least 36 cm large.

Last week, at 37 weeks, I measured 36 cm. Still normal. This morning, at 38 weeks, I measured at 32 cm. Weird, right?

I wasn't seeing my normal doctor today. She's out of town. So her colleague, whom I have never seen before, was a little alarmed. She wanted me to go get another formal ultrasound. I told her I didn't really want to do that. I had been through that before with my first baby, whom I had also carried small, and it ended up being an unnecessary expense and nothing to worry about.

She said that that decision was up to me and she was okay with that, but asked if I wouldn't mind letting her check things out with the smaller, in-office ultrasound machine. I gave her my consent.

My doctor had checked me out with the smaller machine two weeks ago, to check the size of the baby and make sure he wasn't getting too big. After taking measurements, the machine stated that he was 6 lbs. 4 oz. and right on schedule. He was heads down. We just had to wait a few more weeks for him to arrive.

This morning, the machine stated that he was 5 lbs. 3 oz. We also found out that he decided to flip around and he is now sitting breach.

Now the weight loss thing we can't really explain and those little machines aren't terribly accurate when you're in the last trimester. There's a margin of error of plus or minus about a pound.

The doctor measured his head, abdomen, and femur. The head and the femur were consistent with the last measurement, but his abdomen seems to have shrunk. No idea why. She checked the placenta and amniotic fluid and everything was normal.

So basically, since my baby has apparently lost weight and is breach, this means two things:

When the babies are measuring small for gestational age, they like to induce early because the doctors are better able to monitor the baby's nutrition, for lack of a better word, better on the outside than on the inside. Inducing a little early I don't have a huge problem with.

It's still really weird that the baby seems to have lost an entire pound. I'm hoping that it was just a really huge margin of error on the machine's part. 

With the baby being breach (butt down rather than head down), they're much more likely to schedule a c-section for me, which the doctor stated would be a shame since all my other births hadn't been. I think the fact that the baby has shifted position is the reason my belly suddenly shrank.

There is an exercise I can do to try and get him to flip back to heads down. If that doesn't work, I'm going to have my doctor do an aversion (sp?), which is where she presses on my belly and tries to manually coax the baby back into position. If that fails, c-section it is. Ugh.

The colleague is going to consult with my doctor first thing Monday morning, so I'm going to have to wait until then before I know what's going to happen.

So, the news that the baby is suddenly small is weird. An early induction is something I can handle. I'm extremely relieved that, at the very least, he is not a giganto diabetes baby.

The news that he's breach makes me nervous. I do not want a c-section. I'm not opposed to them at all and I've given my consent to one if there's an emergency, but I'd really rather push this little guy out the way he's supposed to come out.

So, here's to hoping that we can get him flipped back to where he should be and that, depending on what my doctor says, we'll either induce early or just let labor start on its own. I am really disliking all this uncertainty right at the very end of the pregnancy though.