A slightly cranky post, having nothing to do with cats.

So a week after my post about my plans for a natural labor and birth, with parallels drawn between marathoning and birth, I'm in a position of having to possibly reconsider. At my doctor appointment last Friday, my doctor brought up the fact that I am again - still - measuring big for where I am in my pregnancy. This has been the case throughout my pregnancy and, honestly, I've chalked it up to me measuring big, rather than the froglet. I wasn't at my skinniest when I got pregnant and, well, my weight gain is slightly over the recommended guidelines. (Bear in mind, I'm still walking every day, being reasonably conservative with my food intake, etc. I'm just going with the assumption that this is how my body wants to be pregnant.) But now my doctor is concerned that the baby might be getting "too big." He's also concerned that I'm still carrying really high; I haven't "dropped" at all. So he's scheduled an ultrasound to get an estimate of the baby's weight, and based on that, might want to talk to me about scheduling a cesarean.

Which I really don't want. Not that there's a wrong way or a right way to give birth; this isn't so much about aspiring for an all-natural crunchy birth experience. If that was what I was after, I probably wouldn't be giving birth at Kaiser. I just really do not want to 1) spend four days (as opposed to 24-36 hours) in the hospital; 2) have to deal with recovering from major abdominal surgery while trying to adapt to life with a newborn.

I've done some research on the accuracy of ultrasounds to estimate fetal weight - there can be a range of error of a pound or two, apparently. And the difference between 8, 10 or 12 pounds is huge. And even if the ultrasound comes back saying the weight is in the "right" range, just the doctor having the idea of a big baby can apparently contribute to more interventions than if the baby was never suspected of being big. Weird, huh? Fortunately for me, I think I have very little chance of actually having my doctor be on staff at the hospital while I'm laboring, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Like I said last week, the end objective is a healthy baby. But me being me, what I would prefer is to be allowed to go into labor naturally, no induction (which can lead to lots of interventions) or c-section, and to be allowed to labor as long as I need to, providing the baby is doing okay. This is my ideal birth, and what I think I will request, regardless of what the ultrasound says. (If there's any risk of danger to the baby, by all means, pump me full of drugs and get him out of me ASAP.) But part of me wonders if this is fair to the froglet, if there is any risk of not being able to be delivered normally, or to Morgan, who will be there with me in the delivery room for as long as it takes. I'm trying to keep an open mind to whatever might happen and keep focused on the end. Our son.

But then I went and took this birth experience predictor, which gave me this prediction:

The day you deliver, outside will be fair. Your baby will arrive in the mid morning. After a labor lasting approximately 35 hours, your child, a girl, will be born. Your baby will weigh about 12 pounds, 7 ounces, and will be 16 inches long. This child will have dark blue eyes and fluffy brown hair.

Yikes.