Re: Big baby..help!!
05/23/06 11:22 AM
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Hon, the worst thing you can do right now is stress. The baby is healthy, and after 15 years as a midwife, I can tell you that, despite the usual rhetoric, big babies do -much- better during the birth process, and so do their moms, than small babies. You may be closer to giving birth on your own than you think. 40 weeks is just an -estimate- of how long pregnancy will last. It is -very- individual for each woman and baby.
If it helps you feel any better, I had three children without episiotomy and with a birth canal that still worked great and was -very- resilient after the births. My children were 10 lbs 2 oz, 8 lbs and 10 lbs 8 oz, respectively. Labors ranged from 14 hours with my first baby to 6 hours with my last.
One thing you can do that will help to protect your pelvic floor during pregnancy and after the birth and help it to go back to being resilient and strong is an exercise called Kegels. The best way to practice kegels is to stop your pee when you go to the bathroom. Once you get a feel for the muscles you use, you can tighten those muscles off and on during the day, in sets of 10-50 at a time. I used to use stoplights and telephones ringing to "trigger" me to start a set. I usually tell my moms at term that they should be doing 1500 or so kegels a day. (I'd forgotten how much I loved being a midwife. I had to give it up 6 years ago, when my MS got too bad... thanks for the opportunity to share)
ZWD
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"Couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't and can't may be the most dangerous words in our vocabulary" - ZWD
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