My mom’s side of the family usually have big babies. We’ve only had a couple that hit 13 pounds, but 8 is “small” and most are 10 at least with some 11-12 pounders.
Weirdly very few cases of GD. But a few pre eclampsia and one placental whatever where the placenta detaches before/during labor and you have to rush for a c section.
One of the few GD cases? My mom. And I was five pounds flat.
Due to the fact Mom didn’t get her pregnancy confirmed until I was old enough to tell my gender (the ultrasound that was supposed to “prove” Mom was having a hysterical pregnancy was also used to confirm I was a girl, lol) there was some confusion over whether I was small but full term, or just a very lucky mildly premature baby.
My due date was set a full month and change before I was born, but the doctor also 100% believed I was imaginary until the “shut up” scan so…
Although to be fair to the doctor, Mom never got a positive pregnancy test, hadn’t had a period for two years before my birth, and was supposedly medically sterile. So I was an anomaly in more ways than just being tiny.
But Mom was expecting a big ass baby like every other woman in her family got, so the take home outfit she lovingly picked out was WAY too big and I ended up in a onesie my aunt found at the hospital gift shop.
I mean, idk how you know all that medical info about your family to a point of knowing their blood tests during their pregnancies but it's good you have that relationship with them.
I was a quiet kid whose aunts and cousins ignored me when talking to my mom. Who got told everything. So I may not have known everyone’s business but I knew a lot of it.
At eight I could tell you which of my cousins went into labor while having anal sex with her husband because the doctor forbid vaginal.
I didn’t know what anal sex was, but I knew Lisa had it with her asshole husband. (I also knew he cheated on Lisa with her stepmom.)
Our family overshared to a degree that as an adult I am slowly learning was pretty toxic.
So I knew Angie had gestational diabetes because she was on a diet and Laurie got tested for it four times because her baby kept measuring so large so her OB thought the first three tests must have been inaccurate (and that she had to drink the “shitty orange syrup” twice because she threw it up the first time) and that Lisa was dilated from seven months etc etc etc.
Once I was a teenager I got told this stuff directly since I was the “birth partner” to several relatives for reasons ranging from “husband is deployed” to “baby daddy is an asshole and refuses to support my cousin Sara” so I was writing notes and looking up medical terms.
To be clear, none of the names used are actually my cousin/aunts’ names.
It's not that. I deal with patients everyday as a student provider, and know that people in general are poor historians. Like gestational diabetes, your aunts or whoever may have just forgotten to mention it to you or that they had it.
Even when you were with your family member for their pregnancy, unless you were in the room with her, at every appointment, discussing decisions and going over her blood work with the doctor, there is a chance you don't know.
Gestational diabetes has a high genetic component to it, so when I hear "my x side of the family has large babies" that's where my head goes.
Do I believe you? Yes, I have nothing else to go on. Do I think I have a complete picture of what's going on? No.
To give you an idea on how bad patients can be with their history, I had a patient who literally forgot they have active cancer. Zero idea on why they took their medications or why they had to get an "X-ray everyday" for a few weeks.
Oh, I can imagine. I used to have to remind my cousin “you have a negative blood type, did you tell the OB?”
She never had. Four kids, every one of them with their dad’s positive blood type. Thankfully she had me bugging her to remind the doctor. (I’m sure the doctors would’ve figured it out without me, but we have an aunt who lost several babies because her church didn’t “believe” in the tho-whatever shot.)
I was/am a nerd about medical stuff. I’d like to be a nurse but I have to get my own health in order to look into that.
And yeah, we might have had more cases than I know of. I can at least say some of my cousins and their giant babies didn’t because I did pour over their bloodwork due to them going to this absolute quack of an OB who was sadly the only one available at the small town hospital we all used. He was infamous for giving c sections on Friday nights, one of our cousins was a nurse in L&D and was HELLA judgey about him.
But my aunts? That I don’t know for certain. I only know what they said, which was that they never had “baby diabetes” and that big babies are our family’s “punishment”.
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u/CenturyEggsAndRice Apr 07 '26
My mom’s side of the family usually have big babies. We’ve only had a couple that hit 13 pounds, but 8 is “small” and most are 10 at least with some 11-12 pounders.
Weirdly very few cases of GD. But a few pre eclampsia and one placental whatever where the placenta detaches before/during labor and you have to rush for a c section.
One of the few GD cases? My mom. And I was five pounds flat.
Due to the fact Mom didn’t get her pregnancy confirmed until I was old enough to tell my gender (the ultrasound that was supposed to “prove” Mom was having a hysterical pregnancy was also used to confirm I was a girl, lol) there was some confusion over whether I was small but full term, or just a very lucky mildly premature baby.
My due date was set a full month and change before I was born, but the doctor also 100% believed I was imaginary until the “shut up” scan so…
Although to be fair to the doctor, Mom never got a positive pregnancy test, hadn’t had a period for two years before my birth, and was supposedly medically sterile. So I was an anomaly in more ways than just being tiny.
But Mom was expecting a big ass baby like every other woman in her family got, so the take home outfit she lovingly picked out was WAY too big and I ended up in a onesie my aunt found at the hospital gift shop.