fundal height - what does it mean?

[fernie3]

I had a consultant appointment last week (was 28 weeks) and she made an appointment for me to have a scan as apparently my fundal height is 35. A few weeks before it was equal with my pregnancy week. My other babies have been normal or quite small at 7 pounds, 5 pounds and 6 pounds and the only extra scans I have had have been for the opposite problem as in fundal height has been too small!.

so what could this mean - is the baby goign to be giant? the doctor pretty much ignored me asking!.

It could mean that you have a bit more amniotic fluid then you should have. They will do a scan to measure it.

I'd say she grossly mis-measured!! Did she dig right down and find your pubic bone and measure carefully?that's a pretty huge discrepancy if you'd been measuring for weeks previously.

to be honest she felt the top and asked how many weeks I was then said "well this will be bigger" then she waved the tape measure at me and said "35" to the student. she didnt really feel the bottom properly - not as well as the midwife does. A week and a half before I had measured equal to my pregnancy well by the midwife. The doctor DID say that the baby was head down but still quite high up as she said "free floating" is it possible the baby is just sitting high up with it being my fourth?.

It sounds like your baby's not fully engaged yet. She may have not measured it correctly, it can be distracting if she's trying to teach a student.

could be badly measured, but 7cm is a big mis-measurment! Maybe too much amniotic fluid.

I haven't had this problem, but I've had the opposite (too little fluid), and I know that both too much/too little fluid round the baby can indicate problems so they need to keep a close check (I had weekly scans and was then induced) to determine the best course of action - you will know more after your scan, hopefully the Dr was simply rubbish at measuring that day, but the "free floating" sounds like there's a lot of fluid???. It sounds lke Dr wasn't very hot on explaining things to you anyway, she shouldn't have brushed your questions aside.

Maybe they will just put you on frequent scans to keep a close eye on things.