Well I didn’t do so well at my ultrasound last wednesday. My OB had sent me back to the perineatologist for another US because I had lost some weight from my last checkup. The US tech was really quiet during the whole scan and I felt like I had to poke her with a stick to get her to say anything about what she was looking at. So then she left and a few minutes later another US tech came in to repeat everything that the previous person had done. When the Dr. finally came in I was already on high alert because I could just tell something wasn’t right. She started talking about the baby being less than the 10th percentile of growth and IUGR (intrauterine growth restriction). She said that sometimes babies just stop growing at a certain point in the uterus and do much better once they are on the outside. She did say that the blood flow to the baby was fine (the cord, placenta, liver, brain) and that during my nonstress test (NST), the baby had reassuring movement and reactivity. She set me up for biweekly NSTs, weekly Dopplers (to check the blood flow) and another growth scan in three weeks (to see if he has gotten any bigger). After these three weeks, if he doesn’t show much progress, she wants to talk about taking him early instead of letting him stay until natural labor comes. I don’t know if I can deal with that... I’ve seen premature babies at my work and what they have to do to them to keep them safe. Also, if he's super small to begin with and they take him early, I can’t even imagine what he’ll go through. I tried to find out all the information on IUGR I could last night to see if there’s something I did wrong or if there’s something I can do differently in the next six weeks, but the literature doesn’t really give that much concrete information. Its almost as if the experts don’t really know that much about it. Its frustrating when someone tells you you’re not quite right but can’t tell you why or how to change it.
I'm hoping that he's just a small baby because I'm a small person. I had a talk with him the other night... I told him that its okay if he wants to be small, he just needs to get a little bit bigger to above the 10th percentile of growth so that way they won't be so eager to take him early. I just want to keep him close to me and safe.