I LOVE my obstetrician and his 'funny' little theories...
I really do love my obstetrician. These are the reasons I loved him in my last pregnancy:
1. He told me that DD would be between 8 and 9 pounds just by feeling my tummy. She was 8lbs 10oz. No messing around with ultrasounds, just a feel. And he told me what size clothes to buy!
2. When I was freaking out, as first-time mothers do, about the prospect of labour and wanting to have a natural birth if possible but not sure if I could do it without pain relief, he said that it's very rarely about pain threshold, it's the length of the labour that determines whether someone uses pain relief and you should NEVER compare your labour with someone else's. So true. I had an epidural after being in labour for a very long time. It was the time factor rather than the pain that prompted the decision.
3. He told me every time he used the doppler that DD was "a very active baby." Now, of course, he may say that to everyone but it is so true. DD is always on the go. I watch other toddlers holding their parents' hands walking down the street and I often wish DD would do that! Oh no, she's off running.
4. He told me that shoe size does have an influence on your pelvis size and therefore 'ability" (I hate that word) to vaginally birth a baby. I actually went in there with that question or I don't think we would have talked about it but he says he looks out for it and picked me as a size 5.5 shoe size. Very small for my height 166cm.
5. He never weighed me or measured my fundal height.
6. He listened to my concerns about having PND based on my past history of depression. He didn't fob me off but reassured me that it was treatable if I found myself in that situation and that I was really smart for acknowledging that it MAY be a problem.
I went back to see him the other day to see what we could do about my lingering SPD (pelvic pain) from my last pregnancy and if there was anything we could do differently in my next labour to avoid it being so bad post-natally the next time around. We had quite a long discussion in the course of which he also covered off:
1. What I can expect in a next labour. He predicts a 4 hour labour. Woohoo - after a very long labour last time that is very encouraging. He bases this on the fact that I had a big baby last time and a long labour which means that my body has been prepped. Now, I would normally take that with a pinch of salt but the fact that he's been so spot-on about so many other things makes me believe him.
1. My question about how come DD was quite a big baby (on the 90th percentile at 8lbs 10oz) but she now sits at the 15th percentile and is such a skinny minny. This caused no end of problems in the early days as I was having trouble breastfeeding and her lack of weight gain was a huge pressure as she was literally sliding down the scale. Mr Ob said that birth weight actually has no bearing on our ultimate weight - it is more to do with culture and that pale-skinned Celtic-originned people (like myself) tend to grow really big placentas and hence have large babies. He himself was a 10lb-er and he'd be lucky if he was 75kg now.
2. Fertility. He says a good rule of thumb is skin elasticity. I said, "OK, how long d'you reckon I've got" and he said after feeling my wrist, that my skin is pretty good and he thinks I've got a good couple of years yet. OBVIOUSLY, I would not rely on that on timing a pregnancy but I did think it was interesting especially as I didn't get any stretchmarks last time and had a tiny tear with a biggish baby and forceps so I DO reckon my skin is pretty good for a near 40-year-old.
And the real reason I love him is that he loves babies. I didn't take DD to this appointment because she would have created havoc in the waiting room but his first question was, "where's your daughter?"
What theories has your ob come up with and do you believe them?
