Underweight and offered growth scans?

[NuttyCasey]

Hi everyone,

So I am 21 weeks pregnant with baby no. 2 and the consultant said because I am so underweight I will have to have growth scans every 2-3 weeks till I give birth?

I'm not concerned about the baby growing as I was also very underweight with my son (mainly due to hyperemisis), and he came out a healthy 8lbs 1oz however I can't understand why they are so concerned this time around?

With my son we had the ordinary scans and nothing more! even though, if anything I was MORE underweight with him?

In my eyes it just gives us more opportunities to see our new addition growing, but was just wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience?

Thank you x

Not me, but my friend who was due the same day as me (in 3 weeks time) was the same as you and they have ended up inducing her yesterday and she now has her baby (he's 5lb)
She already has a son age 11 and didn't get offered these extra growth scans.
I was jell as she got to see her baby on 2 weekly scans and get pictures of his progress :)

It's normal protocol to offer growth scans to low BMI women. Some, but not all, of their babies do not grow well and are at risk. Without scans this could be missed.

I have a very low BMI and I was offered extra scans with both pregnancies.

I quite enjoyed them tbh as it meant I could see my babies more and it did pick up my Ds quicker when he suddenly stopped growing. I had to go in every day for 2 weeks when that happened for a foetal check and he still hadn't grew so I was induced. That probably wouldn't have been picked up as quickly if I hadn't had been regularly scanned.

What is your BMW if you don't mind me asking? Is it based on Bm I at 20 week scan? In general I am considered underweight but doc doesn't check my weight at appointments.

Yeah, I had this, my BMI was 16 at my 8 week appointment. It was quite nice to be able to see DS on the extra scans really. The midwife said that she could see that I wasn't really 'underweight' & that I have a small frame and am not very tall, so I didn't really worry about it at the time.

I was glad that I had the scans in the end though, as they picked up my baby was breech & were able to monitor his position during the last few weeks

There has been recent changes in the antenatal pathway where "higher risk" pregnancies will be offered serial growth scans. For example smokers will be in this category even if they have had children before of normal birth weights.

The guidelines are being introduced to try to reduce the number of still births we see in the U.K. Basically for anyone with one or more of the risk factors that are associated in higher incidence of SB, it is recommended to monitor the babies growth with serial scans. That will include women in the lower end of the risk spectrum e.g. Low BMI, Maternal age above 40, to the higher end of the risk sprectum e.g. heavy smokers.

Don't worry about it, you aren't any higher risk that last time, it's just that the protocols have changed a little.

I'm having extra scans (though I don't think they'll be every 2 weeks) and consultant appointments because of low BMI, plus another extra one this week (16weeks) as I've had a bleed this weekend (horrible!).

It's a bit annoying having to wait 2 hours to see the consultant for 10 minutes, but as others have said, the extra monitoring is probably a good thing even if our weight doesn't actually cause any problems.