Baby is measuring quite big for 29 weeks. What happens now?

[Kayzr]

I had a 4D scan at the weekend. They did a growth estimate and she is already 4lb4oz and should only be about 2lb6oz. I was 29w+2 and the baby measures 31w+5. They estimated she will weigh roughly 11lb at birth.

DS2 was 10lb 5oz so I am not too worried that she is going to big. He was born at home with gas and air. But we had no idea he would big. I never measured big or anything.

I had a GTT a couple of weeks ago and it all came back normal so no worry of gestastional diabetes.

I had planned a home water birth which I imagine is out of the question now.

I don't want to have a CS or be induced. If I had to pick then I guess I would go for the CS as I have heard loads of horrid induction stories.

I would like to be able to go to the MLU and attempt it naturally but if she gets stuck etc I am at the hospital.

I am not meant to be seeing MW until next week so might make an appointment to see her this week.

What happens when you know the baby will be big?

I was measuring 30cm at 28 weeks as well. I was told by the sonographer that they only have a 2oz error margin. So she said that the baby could be between 4lb2oz and 4lb6oz.

Thanks Birds, DS2 was born at home and it was lovely. The MW said when he was born that if they had known he'd be over 10lb then I never would have been allowed to have him at home. I would have been induced at roughly 38 weeks.

She said when I last saw her that if I continued to be measuring big I would have to go into consultant care.

She is very very much pro home birth. She would much rather I had a home birth as she knows its what I want. But the consultant here is very very very anti homebirth.

My eldest children I had with XH who has muscular dystrophy so I had to have a consultant. I know its the same person so I know it will be a big fight to get a homebirth.

The hospital is about 18 miles away. I can choose from 2 but one is about 30 miles away. So I have ruled that out completely as I don't want to risk not getting there.

I haven't had a look at the MLU yet. There are some video tours online that I might look at.

I am hoping I will be able to use the pool if I go there.

My sister went for dozens of scan and appointments as she was having a really tiny baby, they had doctors and NICU waiting when she had him he was 9lbs 10oz I really wouldn't be too worried

Not really, I have had a look and we can't really afford it at the minute as we need a new house and car.

I am just hoping that MW and consultant will be happy for me to do it naturally.

Kayzr I was already a high-risk home birth planner, and then baby started measuring big. It is currently predicted to be born at about 10 1/2lb. I have been measuring approx 3 - 3.5cm over since about 30 weeks.

I am still planning a home water birth. No-one has even attempted to tell me that I won't be allowed to do so because they can't!

You cannot be not allowed a homebirth.

You do not have to have consultant led care, you can decline it (especially since this is unrelated to the reason you had CLC before)

I suggest you take a look at homebirth.org.uk, the Yahoo homebirth group and the Big Babies site (both very helpful) Plenty of women give birth to large babies at home with no problems, and equally plenty of women struggle to give birth to large or small babies in a hospital environment without assistance. See what's on there and then if that confirms your decision to go to the hospital, at least you've made your decision on various pieces of information rather than what one MW tells you :)

Everything birdsofshoreandsea says is also very good

I didn't know that about the consultant care. I just thought I had to do it. I never saw the point with the first 2 as all he did was get his assistant to do what the MW does.

Scans are notoriously unreliable in predicting weight. With dd2 my midwife got slightly hysterical and sent me for an extra scan at 35 weeks. Cue lots of hcp's telling me to expect AT LEAST a 10lb baby and generally winding me right up. My consultant told me not to worry, that it's difficult to tell size before baby is born and that it would be fine

Midwives continued to stress and I was induced at 39+6. During an internal one dic told me the baby had the biggest head she'd ever felt. By this point I was v wound up! 3 hours later my perfect , small headed 8lb 10 dd2 was born!

Please don't worry!

I've done some googling etc and I have read they should take 3 measurements of head, abdomen and femur length and then they work out an estimate from those. They only took one of each at the scan, so I guess it might be a bit wrong.

No, they're the 3 measurements they take - one of the head, one of the abdomen, and one of the femur. Not 3 of the head, 3 of the abdomen, 3 of the femur.

One growth scan on it's own is completely unreliable though, and since the single one I've had, the MWs have confirmed to me that actually, a second one would still be pretty unreliable anyway.

Gets on my wick that women aren't told they can decline various aspects of care if they want to...blood tests, urine tests, measurements, consultant care, scans, induction...I'm not suggesting women should decline these things because it's down to choice, but we should be made aware that there IS a choice!

Hi Kayzr, I don't know how much my experience is of use - I'd don't have any medical qualifications. But when I was expecting DS, I was also told he was measuring very large for dates. I had a HB planned but was referred to a consultant who told me DS could be around 11lb11oz. He strongly recommended a C section and fed me some horror stories about shoulder dystocia. When I asked him to back them up with proven statistics, he couldn't give me anything.

Fortunately, I had a fab midwife who went away and pulled out a range of research papers for me on s.d. I don't have the details now but I think they pretty much concluded that the risk of s.d. was down to the shape of the pelvis, not the size of the baby. I went on to have a 6 hour HB, with no problems at all, not even a tear, and DS weighed 9lb2oz. So, not that big but very, very long - in my case, the ultrasound hadn't been able to tell the difference between a long baby all curled and squashed up, and a very big baby. Afterwards, I was so tempted to write a letter of complaint to the hospital about the consultant because he nearly talked me out of a HB with - as far as I could tell - absolutely no clinical data to support his recommendations.

Of course, you need to talk about all this with your MW, and also grill the consultant to find out if he has any data or evidence to support his anti-HB stance. Especially around s.d. It's been a few years now and I've no idea if the research is the same so worth checking.

Fingers crossed for you, whatever you decide.

I am hoping that as I have done it once with a big baby I can do it again.

Thank you everyone, it helps to be able to read all of this.

I had a growth scan with my DC2. The bump was enormous.

I was predicted a 10lber. In the end he was 11lb 4oz. Nothing special was offered. Just went into labour when 11 days late. He was a normal delivery. The only drama was the cord wrapped around his neck so that he kept going into distress.

I have now read the rest of the thread.

I am amazed with the difference with how different hospitals treat you. When I had DC2 (and knew he was going to be big) there was no talk of early induction or anything else. I did see a consultant directly after the scan. She just shrugged her shoulders and said plenty of ladies have 10lb baby's - you'll be fine.... and that was it. No mention of it ever again till I went into labour at 40 weeks plus 11.

With DC3 the MW could feel he was also pretty big. I didn't even go for a growth scan, he was 10 lbs.