Susanne Remic is a primary school teacher, freelance writer and parenting blogger. She writes at Ghostwritermummy and Maternity Matters and in between all of that she regularly wins mummy of the year awards for running around after her two children, aged six and 19 months. This is her pregnancy blog: an online diary of her third pregnancy as she strives to overcome two difficult births, one angel child and one awkward toddler. Join Susanne as she shares every step of her journey from bump to baby!
Keep that tape measure away from me!
By Susanne Remic on 07 Dec 2011
I’m not tall. My husband is not especially tall. My children are not likely to be giants either. There seems little point in sweating the ‘small stuff’ in that case, wouldn’t you say? Now, we aren’t exactly short and we certainly aren’t abnormal looking, and neither are our children. I say this because the dreaded tape measure always seems to create a problem for me during pregnancy.
When I was expecting my daughter, I called my husband in tears after one ante-natal appointment. The tape measure had been presented and had found our daughter to be ‘too small’. An emergency scan was booked and my husband and I were suitably worried.
I spent that evening drinking full fat milk (yuk!) and crying. The next day my consultant told me that there was no need for a scan and that according to his tape measure, my baby was fine. Phew. My daughter was born at weighing 6lb 15 and perfectly healthy at two weeks overdue.
Roll on five years and that same tape measure was once more causing me grief. My son was apparently ‘too small’ for an elective section and would need urgent care once he was born. On the day I was admitted to the hospital, he was measuring at five weeks ‘too small’ and midwives were showing concern that he was going to require extra attention etc. He was born weighing a healthy 7lb 7 at eight days overdue.
So my children weren’t massive, but they weren’t tiny either. My son certainly wasn’t ‘five weeks too small’, which leads me to question that tape measure.
Can you blame me? This time around, the tape measure was taken out for the first time at my last midwife appointment. I was 25 weeks. I asked whether or not it was really necessary to measure me and was told that yes, it is very important. I was then told that I was measuring ‘too small’. I couldn’t help but smile. I could’ve told her that before she got the tape measure out!
I don’t trust that tape measure. Surely the only way to determine if the baby is too small is to do a scan? If they had done that last time, maybe they would’ve seen that my son was a healthy size and maybe even that the cord was around his neck, making a c-section the safer option after all?
This time, I am not paying any attention to the tape measure. I am what I am and I am not a big person. Why they expect my babies to be big is beyond me!
No comments 
Comments