To think I screwed DD over before she was even born

[Nc4post99]

DD is 23 months. Developmentally on track and beyond cherished.

DH and I were told we’d never conceive naturally so when we did it felt miraculous and so high stakes. I began to feel exceptionally anxious, referred myself for counselling (that was a whole saga but I got refused because I was pregnant so was unable to get help). Then came the medical blunders, bleeding x 2 was told it was miscarriage, dating scan advised medical termination for DS, hydrops and heart failure (total blunder but all normal), then at anatomy scan small head yet another fetal med referral (again blunder) but long story short I was a borderline basket case,
No appetite due to constant worry, trouble sleeping and just extremely anxious with regular panic attacks. Then came the news she was small, we got given all the worst case scenarios and that just topped me off with worrying. She was born healthy but small, no placental failure or FGR or infections or genetic issues, it must have been my anxiety, apparently that can be linked to low birth weight. 5lb at 37 weeks.

Since 6 months she’s ‘caught up’ to between 9/25 for height and weight. But she just had her 2 year check at nearly 23 months and her height has fallen to around the 5th centile (outside of mid parental range) weight and head in her sweet spot (9/25). She’ll have more tests but it’s unlikely they can help her, i basically screwed her over from pregnancy.

I know I’m lucky she’s healthy other wise and there are worse things in life than being petite but I feel so goddamn guilty that I’ve hindered her in this way. I’m 160cm (25th centile I believe) so I’m not a giant but it breaks my heart that she’s going to have to deal with the constant ‘she’s so small’ comments or potentially be bullied for her height and it’s all my f’ing fault. If only I’d sorted my shit out and stopped worrying excessively. I just feel so so guilty and like the worst f’ing mother ever, failing her before she was even born.

apparently that can be linked to low birth weight

The strongest evidence I can find on this merely observes that there may be a correlation between the two, but nothing about direct causal links being proven.

So that's a "may" as well as correlation not causation. Totally different things. Do you understand the difference between correlation and causation? Things can have a strong correlation without one being the cause of the other.

potentially be bullied for her height and it’s all my f’ing fault. If only I’d sorted my shit out and stopped worrying excessively. I just feel so so guilty and like the worst f’ing mother ever, failing her before she was even born.

Can you see the massive thinking error here that's creating all your anxiety?

You have decided your "excessive worrying" ( during a stressful and naturally worrying time) has "potentially" ruined the entire life of your 23 month old child - and therefore you are going to worry excessively in response? How is that logical?

None of the things you are worrying about has even happened, they are all currently figments of your anxious imagination.

Secondly, your child is 23 months old and has one measurement that isn't perfect. Off the back of that you are now imagining the next 90 years of her life being ruined with no redeeming features and no positives - you must have a very high quality crystal ball to see that far into the future with such certainty.

Your thoughts and feelings are not facts.

How you think affects how you feel. It also affects how you behave and will cause self-sabotaging behaviours that mean negative prophecies become self-fulfilling.

I very strongly suggest that you seek support to learn how to differentiate between thoughts, feelings, and facts, and then how to challenge your unhelpful thoughts.

Otherwise the only thing that is guaranteed here is that you will continue to be distressed and miserable, which is totally unnecessary and undeserved.

I know someone who had an iugr baby, with 2 normal sized babies either side. She always believed that it was her fault and had done something wrong during the pregnancy. She gave herself a hard time for about 35 years until her iugr baby fathered his own iugr baby, and I think she finally forgave herself that it was probably genetic.

My sister was born weighing nearly 10lb. She was a gorgeous, roly poly toddler. She is now a very lovely and healthy adult but significantly shorter than either of our parents or any of our siblings. Our extended family, though, includes some very petite women. Clearly there was no problem with growth in utero or early childhood — she’s just smaller than the rest of us constitutionally. Is it possible this is true for your little girl?

Would it be worthwhile having some kind of debrief with medical professionals? You’re clearly very worried and anxious.

I was 5lb when I was born. I was always the smallest in the class but I wasn’t bothered by it. Up until age 14 all my friends were a head if not head and shoulders taller than me. Then I had a massive growth spurt before my periods started and ended up 5ft 4.

say this with all of the kindness in the world my lovely. This is NOT your fault and you need to let it go and enjoy your lovely little girl. She’s got no medical issue other than being on the shorter end of the scale, and that really is nothing to worry about. I don’t even know what centile my now 4YO is, I know she’s shorter than friends children of a similar age, but I literally never think about it as her build matches her height and she is healthy.

Even if high anxiety can impact growth, ANYONE on your circumstances would have been the same and it sounds like you had a really really tough pregnancy journey. Please, take this as permission to stop blaming yourself and give yourself a bloody big pat on the back that you have a much loved and healthy little girl! Enjoy her. X

I'm confused OP. Your DC sounds healthy. Do you have the centile graphs in a red book or similar paper record for DC? If you follow the centile line it will give an estimate for adult height. Hang on I'll take a pic.

Are you sure about the anxiety? I had a small baby and my midwife told me the only things a mum can do that cause that are smoking or drugs. (I'd done neither, in case anyone is wondering!)

5th centile is an adult height of 5 ft 2 I think? You are 5 ft 3 so sounds completely reasonable?

So to answer the general anxiety questions. I was refused treatment until about 1 year PP and was still worrying excessively then. But I managed to do an anxiety workshop which helped loads so I’m not overly anxious anymore, have my moments don’t get me wrong but I have tools to cope with them.

So with regards to being an irrational worry unfortunately this isn’t the case. Medical professionals have been worried about her since before birth. Fetal medicine, I won’t name the consultant(s) but they are highly thought of in their field believed ‘untreated maternal depression and anxiety significantly impacted fetal growth’ as there were no other indications of FGR or any infections (they ran countless tests). Our HV team have been ultra concerned and I’ve been accused of starving her and under feeding her causing her short stature ( paediatrician and dietitian have cleared this misconception up but it got hairy for a while). Paediatrician is concerned now that she has fallen off her growth curve so wants to do more tests to explore. I’m grateful for the medical thoroughness and it’s not a complaint about that but I do feel guilty and as if it’s all my fault as per fetal meds explanation for her size.

Also we never ever mentioned her height or size around her, only exception being medical appointments. It’s never discussed at home and only upsets me on occasion, to me she is perfect and miraculous on any centile. However we do deal a lot with a lot of comments on her size, from strangers in the street, medical professionals who aren’t too well versed in child growth, friends and worst is from family members.

@SoundBar

5th centile is an adult height of 5 ft 2 I think? You are 5 ft 3 so sounds completely reasonable?

Erm it’s not, that tool on the side doesn’t show final adult height. 2nd centile is under 5ft, 9th is 5’1, 25th 5’3 50th 5’ 4.5 x

I had a similar pregnancy and was medicated too. DD was 10lb born but very short, she still is.
Her weight dropped off massively and everyone had me worried until someone noted it was actually in keeping with her height which didn't seem to worry anyone.

It never occurred to me that it was anything other than genetics to be honest. I'm 5.7 but my mother and DHs are tiny so it's not unprecedented.
I get the guilt, I hate that I was medicated at the end of my pregnancy but the psych dept pointed out the constant adrenaline rushes from the panic were also not likely to help the baby grow. You do what you can at the time.

I also I haven’t decided that anxiety caused small growth I was told it in a consult debrief.

On the refusal of counselling because you were pregnant, op...
What's that about? It doesn't sound right at all.

Sounds like you’re a worrier by nature.

You worried throughout your pregnancy - and now regret it.

Yet you’re still worried now your child is a toddler - you’re actually worried about past worrying! Punishing yourself needlessly.

You’re worrying your way throughout your child’s early years.

For nothing. It achieves nothing.

It will not make her taller. She doesn’t need to be taller.

This continual blaming yourself helps nobody. All because of a stupid throwaway comment.

You really do need to get help to be more at peace with yourself. Your child is healthy and happy and will probably be the same height(ish) as you.

There is nothing to worry about. You know yourself you always do the best for your child. Sometimes you may do things and later think it was a bad idea (white dress + no change of clothes on a visit somewhere for example). That’s ok. We all do it. Just learn from it. Then it’s a positive. Move on from the past. Get counselling to help you.

Congratulations on your miracle baby who is fine.

OP, my first baby was stillborn. In my subsequent pregnancy with DS (during covid) I cannot tell you how anxious I was. I felt constantly like I was in a car speeding down the motorway about to hit the barrier. I was in hospital constantly due to my worries, there were a number of times my heart rate was so high for so long that the midwives wanted to send me to a+e. Every scan and check up was on my own which made things so much worse because I was on my own when my daughter died so it was like reliving it every time I went to the hospital. It was hell and I did my best to control my anxiety but I was a wreck. Despite that, my DS consistently measured on or above the 50th centile, when he was born the midwife declared ‘gosh he’s massive!’ You will never know if your DD would have been bigger if you’d been less anxious, but you definitely do not know for certain that your anxiety caused her to be small.
Did your fetal med consultant actually tell you that? Was your placenta sent off for testing? Because your DD may just have always been destined to be small, or there may have been something else going on with your placenta that wasn’t obvious.
Either way, even if your anxiety did contribute - you were in an incredibly stressful situation. You did your best - as did I. You have to forgive yourself because, and I say this really gently, if you don’t it will have a bigger impact on you and your DD than her height.
Anxiety is like a horrible weed that latches onto things, at the moment it’s your DD’s height, but if it wasn’t that it would be something else. There are things that can help you address this, you need to talk to your doctor. CBT was life changing for me after my little girl died. Sending love xx

@GreyhoundG1rl

On the refusal of counselling because you were pregnant, op... What's that about? It doesn't sound right at all.

It was bloody horrible and made my situation so much worse, but basically they cocked up. I started to feel a bit of a worry wart at 8 weeks so thought, let’s be proactive and refer myself get some tools. Wait list was huge as you’d expect so I asked my community midwife to refer me to the mental health midwife (lovely lady saw her once who basically told me to self refer to the local healthy minds which id already done). At 7/8 months pregnant got my initial talking therapy triage appointment, they asked if I’d ever got help before and I said no just saw MH midwife who said to refer here and then they said ah you’ve seen mental health midwife we can’t see you. Discharged there and then. I complained to the mental health midwife and she did her best to support me but unfortunately I went to the back of the list and didn’t get help til 5 months pp. massive cockup and shouldn’t have happened, fighting to get help, 100% made my anxiety worse.

Honestly just relax . My son was 12 weeks prem at 2lb 4oz . At a year he only weighed 17lb .

Stop worrying ! He is now 34 with 2 children of his own and a perfectly normal young man .

Just enjoy this age . They grow up too fast

It’s breaking my heart reading this - you clearly love her so much - I am absolutely shocked the consultants would say this to you. Just because there aren’t other explanations doesn’t mean it’s anything to do with the anxiety - my daughter was born with dangerously low platelets - no idea why and nor did anyone advise any possible reasons why - it was just something that happened and corrected itself. As for the professionals accusing you of not feeding her that’s also heart breaking. People will always say something about kids for some reason - I’ve had people on buses tell me my daughters curly hair is going to be a nightmare for me al- it’s just I boundaried chat it doesn’t mean anyone is actually worried just filling silence thoughtlessly. She’s healthy, she’s loved, she’s small - you’ve not got one thing to feel guilty about x

@Poppy709

OP, my first baby was stillborn. In my subsequent pregnancy with DS (during covid) I cannot tell you how anxious I was. I felt constantly like I was in a car speeding down the motorway about to hit the barrier. I was in hospital constantly due to my worries, there were a number of times my heart rate was so high for so long that the midwives wanted to send me to a+e. Every scan and check up was on my own which made things so much worse because I was on my own when my daughter died so it was like reliving it every time I went to the hospital. It was hell and I did my best to control my anxiety but I was a wreck. Despite that, my DS consistently measured on or above the 50th centile, when he was born the midwife declared ‘gosh he’s massive!’ You will never know if your DD would have been bigger if you’d been less anxious, but you definitely do not know for certain that your anxiety caused her to be small. Did your fetal med consultant actually tell you that? Was your placenta sent off for testing? Because your DD may just have always been destined to be small, or there may have been something else going on with your placenta that wasn’t obvious. Either way, even if your anxiety did contribute - you were in an incredibly stressful situation. You did your best - as did I. You have to forgive yourself because, and I say this really gently, if you don’t it will have a bigger impact on you and your DD than her height. Anxiety is like a horrible weed that latches onto things, at the moment it’s your DD’s height, but if it wasn’t that it would be something else. There are things that can help you address this, you need to talk to your doctor. CBT was life changing for me after my little girl died. Sending love xx

I’m sorry about your little girl, sending love for her!

Yes, fetal med did say that what I quoted in a PP was the verbatim. They did a visual placenta inspection and weighed it and all normal, they said they don’t do testing unless there is a still birth. X

I am the same size as you and was so poor and nauseous that I lived on coffee from the bar I worked at for my entire first pregnancy and produced a scrappy tiny baby who is now a kylie minogue sized 16 year old and blummin’ loves it! She is also ludicrously talented at her hobby and pretty bright. Please please don’t dwell on this but do feed back to your maternity unit how they could have proactively predicted and managed your anxiety that they worsened.

Firstly there is no proof that her low birth weight is all your fault. But you've decided that you want to blame yourself for that so ok, moving on.
The best thing you can do for your dd now is to not pass on your hang ups about her height. To give you a comparison, my dd has permanent scarring from an accident that was party my fault. Her doctor told me that I must not let her see that her scars upset me, because then she would find them upsetting too. So I buried the guilt, told her these things happen, bad luck, never mind, and she isn't bothered in the slightest about them now.
You can't change the past, you can shape the future. Move on, for her sake if not yours.

I am no expert but what I will say is I am only just over 5 foot. My mum is 5'10 and my dad is 6'3. I have always been on the smaller end that is just me. My cousin is too and again looking at parents and grandparents you would expect us to be much taller. We all presume there is some throw back gene coming out in us both - strangley with both look like each other but not like anyone else in our family.

Do I sometimes wish I was tall with long legs yes. I would also long long blonde hair. But equally my best friend who is tall always struggled with not being able to wear heals and being taller than all the boys.

As long as you aren't straving your child and are providing a balanced diet then genetics will do as genetics will do.

On another note. Please try and speak to someone about your anxiety. I know it isn't easy I have PTSD and getting help was terrifying

Don’t worry about it, I’m very tall, 5’9” and both my DDs are below the 50th centile with estimated adult heights of 5’2” - 5’5”. I had HG in both pregnancies and could eat or drink anything (literally nothing, I was on IV drips because I couldn’t drink water) now it may be that that is why they’re shorter or it may just be that I’m unusually tall and haven’t passed it on but there’s nothing we can do about it now.

Thank you.

I think that was irresponsible of fetal med, as a PP said there is a hypothesis but not a proven link. It’s the consultants theory, not fact. Also, visual inspection and weight is just part of the story with a placenta. I’ve spoken with lots of women who have been pregnant after stillbirth who suffered hugely with anxiety and depression in pregnancy who had babies high on the centiles.
The situation with medical professionals and your daughter sounds really stressful, but you are a good mum and this is not your fault. Guilt is part of anxiety, like I said previously proper CBT would help. Do you have any means to go privately if you can’t access it through the NHS? Xx

@3cats4poniesandababy

I am no expert but what I will say is I am only just over 5 foot. My mum is 5'10 and my dad is 6'3. I have always been on the smaller end that is just me. My cousin is too and again looking at parents and grandparents you would expect us to be much taller. We all presume there is some throw back gene coming out in us both - strangley with both look like each other but not like anyone else in our family.

Do I sometimes wish I was tall with long legs yes. I would also long long blonde hair. But equally my best friend who is tall always struggled with not being able to wear heals and being taller than all the boys.

As long as you aren't straving your child and are providing a balanced diet then genetics will do as genetics will do.

On another note. Please try and speak to someone about your anxiety. I know it isn't easy I have PTSD and getting help was terrifying

That’s sweet, thank you!

But sometimes it’s not as straightforward as nutrition and genetics, there are other conditions and deficiencies that can hamper growth.

I’ve managed to get help for my anxiety now, i just feel residual guilt after being told it was as a result of worrying xx