Due February 2025 - Thread 4

[UrbanSquirrel]

Just creating this so that we have somewhere to continue when Thread 3 fills up. If you're due to have a baby in February 2025 (or late January or early March, as we have a wide spread!), come join us for support, advice and (at present) some really useful Black Friday recommendations! Big welcoming hugs to all the usual suspects coming over from Thread 3 🤗

I'm also still working and struggling to concentrate, only going to be finishing a few days before my due date but the motivation has gone! Also can't seem to get through the day without a nap luckily I'm work from home.

@ThisLimeDeer Agree with the mood swings, over Christmas I was crazy one minute fine next minute crying or angry for very little reason. It's not been as bad this week so put it down to Christmas madness.

Also no date here...just playing the waiting game. At my 37w appointment midwife told me the baby's head was 2/5 engaged - I didn't realise it was a count DOWN from 5/5! Had a growth scan today BC bump has, in fact, shrunk. All ok and sonographer said the head is too low to measure. 👀 Apparently it means nothing, but I'm hyping myself up anyway.

Also sonographer showed me the baby's profile and all I could see was my MIL. 🫣 Not sure how I feel about this...

37w/birth choices appointment was very thorough. My midwife explained that in case assistance is needed, it's not really a choice of forceps/ventouse/CS - it depends on how far down the baby is. If sufficiently low, they will use ventouse. If still high up, they will try forceps - only allowed three pulls before having to proceed to CS. 🤷

@QuantumPanic apparently some midwives do the engagement as a count down, some count up! (Eg. One might say 2/5 engaged meaning there are 2/5 of the head engaged in the pelvis, one might say there’s 2/5 left to palpate). I had a student last time and her and the community midwife did it opposite ways so I never knew what it meant!

Good news about baby being too low down to scan though, sounds promising!

Mine has been engaging and disengaging on a daily basis if the heaviness in my vagina is anything to go by! Apparently that’s common with second babies!

I think it’s lying in a sort of L shape, with its head in my pelvis, bum under one side of my rib cage and feet under the other, I keep seeing a little foot poke out on one side and a massive hard lump on the other!

Mood swing... Omg!! This Christmas. There was a couple of times out of the blue I snap at my mum for a stupid reason and felt super bad and one day, I started crying badly because my partner exited a round about for the wrong exit and instead of going to the services area we carried on the motorway. I needed a wee but honestly I couldn't stop myself of crying. I felt so stupid.

@Hhdxx if it makes you feel any better, I've eaten loads of cold smoked salmon over this pregnancy. I think the risk is just in case you get sick but if you're feeling fine then try not to stress. I've also had goats cheese made on a farm in a hillside vineyard in Italy as well as unpasteurised cheese (sold in Tesco which I was surprised about - thought it was all pasteurised in the UK!) and have been fine 😊

@retrievermum 😮 Well, she did make it very clear that it's not an indication of when the baby is going to arrive, so I suppose it doesn't matter if she was counting up or down - but I'll ask when I next see her anyway. 🙂 My baby is lying the same way!

@QuantumPanic so annoying not knowing though isn’t it haha! Although I’ve just looked at my notes from my last pregnancy and baby was declared 5/5 engaged at my last midwife appointment (which was 39+4ish I think), but I can’t remember if the midwife or the student put that in!

@superj21 thanks for your message. I keep thinking I feel sick but I haven't been sick and haven't had diarrhea or anything like that. I keep burping which I have had in the third trimester before but just think I'm overthinking it all. It's been 5 days since I've ate the salmon so should be ok x

I'm not a doctor but if you were going to get sick from the salmon I am pretty certain you'd feel it by now 🙂. I wouldn't be worried about the burping either, our digestive systems are all being squished about so it's not surprising!

@superj21 thank you. I'll see how I feel the rest of the day. Xx

@QuantumPanic 37 weeks is so close ♥️!!! How are you feeling? I’m glad the appointment was thorough. My next consultant appointment is at 37 weeks but I have the midwife at 36.

as for mood swings I’m glad I’m not alone, I’ve felt both anger and general feelings of low mood for no apparent reason and sometimes I forget that I’m pregnant and feel stupid for it 😭.

I’m due on the 10th Feb! She’s head down but not engaged at all at the moment, so much I think is quite common if it’s not your first. 35+4 and both wanting her to come soon but also panicking because there’s so much still to do! We did a long distance move in the summer and it still feels like we’re reeling from that and knee deep in renovations etc 🤪

Another issue (well, sort of) is that we’re now bang in the middle of two hospitals, both about 45 mins away. One is York and the other Hull. I was originally thinking home birth as I’m low risk but am getting cold feet due to the distance. Poor outcomes I believe occur in 4 out of the 1000 homebirths, which is a low number but I’m quite risk averse and can’t help feeling a bit anxious in case of worst (cord prolapse etc) happening. Also, both hospitals are rated inadequate for maternity care with the cqc reports highlighting some pretty concerning stuff. One is slightly better than the other but neither are great. I’m a HCP with previous experience writing and reviewing procedures and regulatory documents for maternity units so can’t be blissfully unaware of some of the things mentioned.

Is anyone else in a similar position? I just feel stuck between a rock and a hard place!

@MyHappyNewt that sounds like a tough decision. What are some of the concerns CQC highlighted about the hospitals?

My advice would be that if you are anxious/worried about home birth don’t do it. Child birth is anxiety provoking enough on its own and you really don’t need extra stress. If your gut feeling is telling you no I’d say listen to it. Also wouldn’t you potentially need to deal with the same hospital staff anyway if they needed to come and see you? I don’t know enough about home births to know this so this is a genuine question.

@MyHappyNewt I’m not trying to talk you out of a home birth if that’s what you want, but remember the 4/100 doesn’t include hospital transfers, so anyone who has had to go into hospital isn’t counted in the home birth statistics. I can totally see the appeal, I’d love to have a home birth this time around but with trying for a VBAC I wasn’t sure enough to go for it!

In terms of hospitals, the way I’d look at it is that if they’ve been rated so badly, publicly, they’ll be getting extra support drafted in, and so in a way it could end up being better than a hospital which has higher ratings but has been coasting for a while, if that makes sense? For example, my hospital is rated as being “good” but I know of a LOT of people who have had really big issues with how they’ve been treated etc (myself included), whereas another local one is rated as requires improvement but I don’t know anyone who wasn’t happy with the care they received. Anecdotal I know, but it might reassure you slightly!

@MyHappyNewt Just wanted to share my experiences as a York hospital patient in case it is helpful. I have not delivered at York but I was an in-patient in the antenatal ward for 3 weeks in 2023 and was really surprised when I found out that it was rated as inadequate as I found most of the midwives and Drs very caring, knowledgeable and supportive. I had one or two issues with miscommunication on handovers but overall the care was very good and I felt in safe hands. I was moved to a hospital with a NICU at 24 weeks with a maternity unit rated as good and I had more issues there with the level of my care, miscommunication and basically feeling forgotten about at times. I agree with retrievermum that hospitals not worried about their ranking can probably coast a bit more.

I am at York again for this pregnancy and have felt very well taken care of so far. I am classed as high risk and consultant led so not sure if that has affected anything.

That being said I do have a friend who delivered in 2021 who moved hospitals for second baby as she did not rate the care she received at delivery.

Have you ever had to go into either hospital for anything? Sometimes a day unit or triage unit can give you the vibe of a place.

My local hospital is rated inadequate for maternity too - I had my last baby there and it was ok (shortly before the rating). I'll use it again as it's so close but it's part of why we're having a doula this time around and I will be basically refusing to go on the postnatal ward - I think that's where staffing issues etc are most obvious. I just want to go home ASAP!

Some of the concerns were regarding failure to safely handover patients and also failure to recognise when mothers and babies were deteriorating. Other concerns were about infection control, lack of training for high dependency care/emergencies and weirdly a lack of ctg machines! I know that the cqc can make a lot of fuss sometimes but these all seemed like quite significant things…

That’s a good point about the home birth as I think it would always be at the back of my mind whether something was going to go wrong. I was thinking of booking for one just so that we have all of the equipment at the house in case of a precipitous labour. I don’t know why I’m thinking about that though, considering that my first took DAYS to arrive 😂

That’s true about the home birth stats - I hadn’t thought of that. I know that York in particular has brought in new senior leadership etc so I think you’re right! I might ask if I can visit to get more of a feel for the place

That’s really interesting about the difference in care between the two! I’ve visited Hull several times (I booked with them when we moved so have had an appt, a scan and visited triage once) - parking was a nightmare (it took about an hour to find a space when I went alone to triage), roadworks with 40mph zones for a good part of the journey and triage was pretty packed and was waiting a loooong time to be seen and then signed off by a doctor. Other than that though, I’ve had a fairly good experience with them at the hospital. The community care is lacking though. I haven’t been to York hospital apart from to drop my DH off at A&E 😳

It’s reassuring to hear that you feel like you’re getting good care at York. Decisions…

I've just had my midwife appointment and protein was found in my urine. I've been getting some other signs of pre-eclampsia such as headaches, pain under ribs, and dark urine, although not consistently. My blood pressure was normal. Has anybody here has protein in urine but normal blood pressure and it turned out to be pre-eclampsia? I get blood test results tomorrow but thought I'd ask here for experiences

Hi @Lunalovegod on the one hand I believe false positives are very much possible with urine tests. On the other hand, the midwifery textbook I bought for a few quid seems to say that high BP, while a common symptom, is not a an absolutely essential symptom of pre-eclampsia - and you've had some other symptoms. So I'm not medically trained but I would suggest that if you get anything like headache, visual disturbances, gastric pain, you make contact with someone there and then. Hopefully all will be totally fine for you! X

I had a feeling something might come up tbh as I've not been feeling well recently, it's just hard to say what's 'normal' pregnancy stuff or if it's something more. My midwife appointments over Xmas period were rebooked until now as my daughter and I were ill with that flu virus, so I'm a bit delayed in getting my symptoms checked. See what they say tomorrow but I wouldn't mind an early induction tbh. Thank you! X

I had two episodes of protein in my urine at 36 and 38 weeks in my first pregnancy (it was clear on my due date). Blood pressure was normal so nothing further was done. However when I was in labour my blood pressure was raised and the blood test came back as positive for pre-eclampsia, although by that point baby was on the way anyway. It’s good news they are testing your blood now anyway and hopefully all will be ok x

Hello everyone. 36w and having a proud moment right now. 3 week countdown until my induction and feeling blessed to be able to provide for my little one 🥹