Monday, June 19, 2006

I forgot to say...

When I wrote the last post about my doctor waiting to see about the baby's size before deciding on potential methods of delivery I asked if that meant I was going to have an ultrasound.

"Ah, we'll see."

Huh? How exactly are we going to decide the size of this child? Are we going to go with a guess-timate? It is not that I do not entirely trust her word, she's 2 for 3 with my lot but the one that was wrong was way wrong.

For Taylor she said high 7s, low 8s. She was 7lbs 15oz so not a bad guess. Saoirse she was pretty dead on..high 8s she says and the baby was 8 lbs 14.

But Liam...well, she said high 7s and he was 9lbs 9 oz. Now I know that's nothing for some people (high 10s for Devynn's little guy) but as I have a negative 6 pain tolerance I am not wishing for a baby so big. Even though they are the most adorable things ever.

Liam was actually my easiest birth, but this has nothing to do with what I am writing this post about.

What I am writing about is ultrasounds. Now I know that there are an awful lot of people who legitimately need many ultrasounds. But I am amazed by the amount of blogs I read where they seem to be going for an u/s every week or two, just to see the baby. In a way I wish I could do that too, but I would worry about the side effects. I think I would rather know that the baby is healthy and leave it at that, with a nice picture for my scrapbook. That being said, I do want one more ultrasound with this baby as I actually think my dates might be off and she really might be due in July.

I mean absolutely no offense to those people who have had multiple ultrasounds, I suppose the right to do so is one of the joys of being in the United States and though there might be pay as you go places here, I certainly don't know of them. When I was pregnant with Taylor I was told that I would only get one ultrasound unless there was something wrong. They wouldn't even tell me what she was and that I will totally blame on Americans. The tech said "Too many Americans sue when the baby arrives as the opposite sex so we aren't allowed to tell." With Liam I had two, the second was because in the first his head appeared to be shaped like a lemon (picture if you will Stewie from the Family Guy, which is exactly what I pictured and that was pre-Family Guy.) I think I wrote about that in the other blog. I had two again with Saoirse, and her second was because in the first they discovered she only had a 2 vessel cord so they needed to see how her kidneys were developing.

I don't regret the fact that I only had one with Taylor, she was totally worth the wait. Still, it was nice to see Liam and Saoirse at two different times. And it certainly won't kill me if I don't get to see the baby once more before she arrives. It's not like it would actually help me decide on a name.

3 comments:

Paige said...

I know that most doctors only allow the one ultrasound which is the big 20 week gender anatomy one. I live in the states and that is what I hear from all of my pregnant friends/acquaintances. My doc told me after our miscarriage that we would have one right away to see the heartbeat, and then one every month if I wanted. Personally, this would be great for the first visit, but just hearing with the doppler would be fine with me.

As for Americans suing. Yeah, that is what we do apparently. One of the big reasons NorPlant is not allowed in the US anymore is because of so many of us suing over the scars it left.....hellooooo birth control implanted in your arm and you didn't think there would be scars? stupid americans. Besides that the gender prediction off of the scan is only about 90% accurate...so how can they sue?

stupid.

Boliath said...

July? like next month July? Em...yeah I think you should probably find out pretty soon. Can't believe it's so soon, can't wait, yahoo.

Chastity said...

Well, I don't know the negative effects of ultrasounds, or even if they're sure if there really are any, but I wouldn't trade mine for anything. I didn't have them every week or even every few weeks, but I had my fair share. If they had only done one during the second trimester for me then my baby would probably not have made it. Outwardly, there were no signs that anything was wrong, measuring my belly everything seemed fine, but once they started measuring using the u/s at around 36 weeks that's when they realized she wasn't on track anymore...and she didn't get any bigger over the next week. They really aren't sure she'd have made it if they'd have just let me go until I went into labor weeks later. So, I'm an u/s fan, but to each his/her own.