Dads, and in this case future dads, trust your gut.
So my wife and I have been expecting our second for 36 weeks and along the way his measurements started getting "ahead" in size, most clearly by 32 weeks, creating concern of gestational diabetes (for the docs). For me however it always felt like a he'll be early situation.
Anyway at her 36 week ultrasound my wife expressed concern that the night before our new one had a few hours that he didn't move much compared to how he had been moving around. The doc seemed mildly concerned and said something along the lines of sometimes they'll have a lazy hour, but more than that just come to L&D for monitoring. Wife and I aren't well off, so we're hesitant to take on more costs unnecessarily, but we still added it to the thoughts and concerns of pregnancy that we didn't have with number 1.
Well yesterday she had a fair period of time that she was experiencing at most 2 movements an hour without direct stimulation on her belly, when she told me she said 7hrs (5pm-ish). I initially said do what you think is right, but within 30 minutes I was telling her call my parents to watch number 1 and go on in, not worth regretting not going, and regretting going was a lesser regret.
So, she got to the hospital slightly ahead of me (working 30 minutes farther ahead) so when I walked in they were escorting her to L&D. They put her on a fetal heart monitor for 2 hours and while his pulse seemed strong except for maybe one short burst when it appeared to drop to 110 for less than 30 seconds. They followed that up with an ultrasound in which he didn't really move for 20 minutes (30=indication to immediately C-section) and he wasn't practice breathing which wife and I had witnessed him doing every weekly ultrasound since 29 weeks and I could actually feel him doing 2 days previous if I touched her belly.
The opinion of the docs was "He meets all the criteria to be ok, and at 36 weeks he's considered premature, but something does feel outside of the norm for this baby so we should make a mutual decision on how to proceed." After a short discussion and a few more gut feelings being expressed, the OB led us to the decision I didn't want to be the one to make the final call on and said, "I think we should have a baby tonight."
We proceeded to have a C-section and on exit, it was discovered that not only did our new one have the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck twice, but the umbilical cord also had a true knot in it that had almost tightened down. If we would have waited, we could have had a stillborn.
Tl;dr: If I, my wife, or her doc hadn't trusted our gut, I may not have a second son.
So my wife and I have been expecting our second for 36 weeks and along the way his measurements started getting "ahead" in size, most clearly by 32 weeks, creating concern of gestational diabetes (for the docs). For me however it always felt like a he'll be early situation.
Anyway at her 36 week ultrasound my wife expressed concern that the night before our new one had a few hours that he didn't move much compared to how he had been moving around. The doc seemed mildly concerned and said something along the lines of sometimes they'll have a lazy hour, but more than that just come to L&D for monitoring. Wife and I aren't well off, so we're hesitant to take on more costs unnecessarily, but we still added it to the thoughts and concerns of pregnancy that we didn't have with number 1.
Well yesterday she had a fair period of time that she was experiencing at most 2 movements an hour without direct stimulation on her belly, when she told me she said 7hrs (5pm-ish). I initially said do what you think is right, but within 30 minutes I was telling her call my parents to watch number 1 and go on in, not worth regretting not going, and regretting going was a lesser regret.
So, she got to the hospital slightly ahead of me (working 30 minutes farther ahead) so when I walked in they were escorting her to L&D. They put her on a fetal heart monitor for 2 hours and while his pulse seemed strong except for maybe one short burst when it appeared to drop to 110 for less than 30 seconds. They followed that up with an ultrasound in which he didn't really move for 20 minutes (30=indication to immediately C-section) and he wasn't practice breathing which wife and I had witnessed him doing every weekly ultrasound since 29 weeks and I could actually feel him doing 2 days previous if I touched her belly.
The opinion of the docs was "He meets all the criteria to be ok, and at 36 weeks he's considered premature, but something does feel outside of the norm for this baby so we should make a mutual decision on how to proceed." After a short discussion and a few more gut feelings being expressed, the OB led us to the decision I didn't want to be the one to make the final call on and said, "I think we should have a baby tonight."
We proceeded to have a C-section and on exit, it was discovered that not only did our new one have the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck twice, but the umbilical cord also had a true knot in it that had almost tightened down. If we would have waited, we could have had a stillborn.
Tl;dr: If I, my wife, or her doc hadn't trusted our gut, I may not have a second son.