Small baby, monitoring, induction..

[Penguin34]

Hello,

Can anyone else share their experiences? I'm feeling a little lost..

I had a 4d private scan at 30 weeks and paid extra for all the health checks because you might as well.

The sonographer kept going back to the Doppler of the placenta flow and head measurements.
She said the head is showing small and with reduced blood flow to the placenta so I need to call my midwives now and go in.
I called them and they spoke to the sonographer, my midwife at the birthing uniting asked me to go straight there.
I was monitored for around an hour and they said they would call me Monday (it was sat) with an apt for a growth scan and consultant.

Monday morn she called and said I was booked for consultant wed and they would call me about a scan for tue.
Then the hosp ultrasound dept called and said to come for an emergency scan right now!
So I did and explained to the sonographer that this was for my apt wed and after she took her measurements she said no you need to go round to the ward and show this report now.
Which I did. The dr there had told me she was small but the blood flow was ok and I was monitored again for an hour.
He said there plan is for me to be monitored twice a week, then scanned and consultant every other week. They will most probably induce me between 37-40 weeks.
They will let me know at my 36 week apt.

I came armed with questions but I still feel it's all been such a whirlwind and I just feel all over the place.
They said she is 5th centille but I forgot to ask what that is?
I'm asking them how small is small? How worried should I be but they can't answer.
My beautiful calm drug free water birth at the midwife centre is now out and I feel so guilty for being upset about that.

Thank god I had that private scan.

Sorry for the essay.. xxx

5th centile means that if you ranked 100 babies, she'd be the fifth smallest.

(You are totally allowed to ring the midwives and ask questions if you think of them after appointments, they absolutely prefer for patients to be reassured. I'm not sure how small is small, either)

The thing about these scans are: they do have a big margin of error and so there might not be anything to worry about (which is why they keep measuring and re-measuring because they don't want to do anything unnecessarily)

You might get your midwife centre birth, if at week 36 they can see no reason for induction... and even if you have an induction around 37-40 weeks, it still could be beautiful and calm. I don't know what the guidelines are in the UK but in Denmark, you can get in the tub during an induction, so even though I'd had the prostaglandins, I was able to have a bath for pain relief too.

There is NO shame in grieving for the birth experience you have been hoping for. I wanted a beautiful, calm, drug-free homebirth but I got a beautiful, calm epidural-assisted induction at hospital. Coming to terms with that before and after was tricky but you get there. During, weirdly, I was totally fine with everything!
One thing that helped was re-writing my birth wishes in the light of where I would be/what would be available.

My top recommendation is to get a hypnobirthing download (I used Maggie Howells) and listen to it every evening until the big day. I think they have different ones for different birthing venues. Get your birth partner in on it: they need to know some of the techniques like counting you down to relaxation or helping you with visualisations. I thought I'd remember during crunch time but you go into an altered state and a lot of the things you thought you'd remember to do sort of get lost.

Also, have a look at Spinning Babies and try some of the exercises they have, they're great to know how to do when labour starts, as well as making things more comfortable in the last few weeks.

IM going through this aswel, exact same, heading for a private scan tomorrow to prepare myself for Monday where they decide to give the lung steroid or not and plan induced labour, I left my last app (mon) so confused and not understanding anything they said, in again on Monday and I’m demanding I see a consultant because all this worrying can not be good, haven’t slept properly in days! I’m 33 weeks baby was weighing in 10percentile 11 days ago at 3.7lb so hoping it’l be over 4lbs by tomorrow xxx can u keep me posted on how ur getting on as I don’t know or anyone else going through the same thing, most have either bad Doppler or slow growth and not both 🙄😬😢