My Pregnancy Diaries | Week 17

I am purposely late with this weeks installment of pregnancy diaries due to the stuff that has gone on this week. I mentioned in last weeks diary that I was seeing the midwife on the Friday and I would update you all. Well..that was a fun appointment!

I went in and it wasn’t my normal midwife but in fact the midwife that originally booked me in when I was first pregnant with Jack. Talk about a blast from the past! She did the normal things like checking the urine sample, checking my blood pressure before dropping the bombshell on me that Jack was an SGA baby and arranging a consultant appointment at the hospital pretty much in the same breath. Within minutes I was out the door with no real clue what SGA meant and hoping that Steve was actually off on the day she had booked me in for as she didn’t even ask me if I was free on that day until after she had made the appointment and put down the phone. Yup…would have been tough if I wasn’t free and Steve wasn’t off as she never checked but luckily it was fine and we could attend.

I spent all week worrying about SGA and what it meant – I googled, I asked my friend who is a nurse, I asked in a bloggers group if anyone knew about it and thankfully there were a few who were very knowledgeable about the subject and could put my mind at rest. I would normally have posted this post on Tuesday but I wanted to wait until after Friday’s appointment to see what was going on.

SGA stands for small gestational age and it was flagging up that Jack was small when born at 41 weeks at 7lbs and 3/4 of an oz. I didn’t think that was very small at all but resolved to finding out what the consultant had to say. If it turned out Jack was an SGA baby then I would be consultant led and have extra scans throughout this pregnancy. I was just baffled as to how we were only just finding out.

We arrived at the hospital only to find the consultants were running an hour and a quarter late (I was so hungry and thirsty by the time we finally got out of there) and when we were finally seen, the consultant looked through my notes at Jack’s weight, checked his system to make sure it hadn’t been put down wrong somewhere and then let me into a secret.

The measurements for SGA babies have only come about in the last couple of years and weren’t around when Jack was born. So because Jack was born before it happened, they took my weight from being 12 weeks pregnant with the baby I am now and compared it against Jack’s birth weight four and a half years ago. Based on my weight at 12 weeks in this pregnancy, Jack was smaller than he should have been. The consultant said the problem lies where there isn’t any accounting for weight loss or weight gain in that time period between pregnancies. I mentioned that I was around 2 stone lighter when I had Jack and he said that Jack’s weight would have then been a healthy weight for my weight – so not SGA at all. He now doesn’t think that this baby is SGA at all but to take precautions and make sure, I will still be having extra scans and at least one more consultant appointment to keep a check on the baby’s size.

It sure has been a dramatic week and I’m exhausted just thinking about it – whether this baby is SGA or not SGA, I really don’t know but I’m sure I will find out next time I have a consultant appointment. Here’s hoping week 18 is less eventful!