You may have noticed I added the BabyGaga ticker to the header. I also changed the due date on it to March 17, instead of March 22, because I really feel it is more accurate than the menstrual date. I know I ovulated early!
But when you sign up for the ticker, you can also sign up for developmental emails every week. Here's what I got for this week:
"Week 32. This week your baby is dangerously close to the 4 pounds, 17 inches mark, so it pretty much makes sense that you feel massive...."
(emphasis mine).
Now, just look at that language. Good night! No wonder women have c-sections for babies that are "too big" at 7 or 8 pounds. "Dangerously close????" "Massive?" What kind of language is that? It's alarmist bullcrap is what it is.
I have a student in my CBE class right now that had an ultrasound at 31 weeks and they told her the baby was already *4 whole pounds!!!* and that she was getting HUGE and probably wouldn't make it to her due date. Blech. What nonsense. The size of the baby has NOTHING to do with when she has the baby, excepting of course that the doctor will start to freak out because of "big baby" and want to induce her. Blech again.
What is all this fear of the big baby? When I've had people hear that someone had a 9 pound baby, their eyes get as big as dinner plates as if a woman has just arm wrestled a grizzly bear or something. 9 POUNDS IS NOT A BIG BABY. It's a good size baby. It's a healthy baby. 11 pounds is a big baby. Maybe even 10 or 10.5 would qualify as big. But I can tell you so many times students who were induced for big baby or even had an elective section for their "sure to be 10 pound" baby and ended up with a 7.5 or 8 pound baby. And the doc says, "Well, ultrasounds aren't always accurate for telling the size of the baby." Nice time to tell her that, eh?
I can feel with my hands pretty well now the size of a baby (except my own :-P) but I don't for a minute let the MOM think that a big baby is going to be a problem.
About Me
- One Hot Mama
- I'm an early forties (advanced maternal age) mother of eight (grand multipara) who has had babies every way you can have them. Three in the hospital with docs and drugs; fourth baby at home with a lay midwife; fifth baby a c-section; sixth an HBAC waterbirth that my hubby caught, seventh an unattended home waterbirth and the eighth an emergency c-section. I'm a self-proclaimed birth junkie. I love movies and music, and I'm addicted to having babies and helping others have them too.
2 comments:
Hi
first I wanted to say I really enjoy reading your blog. Funny how things are the same wherever you are.
About the baby size thing - I had a 9lb7oz baby and a 11lb4oz baby and the labour was FANTASTIC for the 11lb4oz baby. I think the experience of labour and birth has nothing to do with size of baby and negative comments about a woman's ability to give birth to a potentially "big" baby can influence the outcome of the labour to such an extent that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Julie
My mom gave birth to four 10 pound babies. When i asked her about it she said "How much they weigh doesn't matter...it's how well their shoulders go together that you want to know!" (kidding, of course). I've never once heard my mom describe the birth of her four kids as anything but wonderful.
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