My Chubby Baby Girl

At 20 weeks, I had my first ultrasound.  The baby looked great and the ultrasound tech said "It's a Girl!"  We were so excited to have another baby girl entering our family!  When our midwife and the doctor she works with looked over the ultrasound measurements, they were a little concerned about one thing.  Baby M's head was measuring about two weeks behind the rest of her body.  They told us this could just be because she was in breech position and sometimes this squishes up their heads and makes them hard to measure.  They wanted to be sure though, so they set up an appointment for a second ultrasound.

At the second ultrasound (25 weeks), M was still in that breech position.  She seems to be a stubborn thing!  Overall, she was measuring at 24 weeks which really isn't a concern.  Her head was measuring within the same week as the rest of the body, but was still below the 10th percentile.  My midwife thought this was probably fine, but the doctor really wanted to send me on to the high risk pregnancy ultrasound clinic.  They would do a more detailed ultrasound, see if the cord was okay and everything.

We prayed about this for a while.  We had multiple concerns with taking this course of action.  It seems that when a doctor gets worried about something, they start taking unnecessary steps to intervene just to cover themselves in case something were to go wrong.  We experienced this when H was born and are not willing to go through it again.  On top of that, we knew that the high risk ultrasound would be costly and we have very lousy insurance right now.  After praying about it, I called my midwife and told her we were going to opt out of the high risk ultrasound.  I was extremely nervous when making this call just because I don't like confrontation, but I shouldn't have been because she was extremely supportive.

She suggested that instead, we schedule another regular office ultrasound and just monitor the growth.  I was reluctant even to do this, but went ahead and consented.  We prayed up to today that everything would be normal and put the doctor's mind at rest.  My biggest concern was that I would get into labor and they would start pushing things I'm not interested in because "the baby has a small head."  I don't want them to have a reason to be concerned and consider this an abnormal pregnancy.

Praise the Lord!  M decided to turn head down for today!  As the ultrasound tech measured the belly, looked at the face, hands, feet, and legs, I was in awe.  She's so chubby!  I didn't have an ultrasound with H this late in pregnancy, so I just couldn't believe how chubby M looked!  The typical skeleton face was full of baby fat!  The ultrasound tech was able to get a much better measurement of the head and guess what??  It was perfectly in the normal range!  In fact, M was overall measuring from 29 weeks 3 days to 29 weeks 5 days and the head was at the top of that range!  Praise God!

I know I said I didn't want any more ultrasounds, but I really am glad we did this one.  It puts everyone's minds to rest and gives me the confidence to go into labor knowing that my baby is just fine!