Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Hugest Baby Ever



So I'm in the middle of studying for my Step 2 right now. Not nearly as hugely important in deciding the course of the rest of your life quite like Step 1, but it's still pretty important. So, I wasn't intending on blogging until after the test, which begins in 35 hours from now, but when I saw this I couldn't resist. A 17 pound 1 ounce baby. That's a really big baby.

Surprsingly, this little bundle of joy was born via C-section. I've seen my fair share of those and it's usually a pretty tight fit for a regular size baby to come out. I would have to guess they didn't go with a fanninsteil on this one.

Anyway, on further reading of the article lots of read flags went up. That's how they train us, you know. This was baby #12. Cheaper by the dozen, right? Apparently none of the other 11 babies came in under 10 pounds. And mom couldn't afford any fancy diet, so she just went with potatos (carbs), noodles (carbs), and tomatos (not-carbs). I thought pregnant women were supposed to get unsatiable odd cravings. The point is that this sounds like classic gestational diabetes. Insulin is an anabolic substance. Anabolic kinda like anabolic steroids, but not quite. That means it helps build tissue up. Mom's with diabetes are resistant to insulin's effects, which is why they start making too much. Babies, however, are not insulin resistant. So babies become overtly huge if gestational diabetes goes untreated. There can be other complications, but this is classic "macrosomia" (litterally translates to "ginormous body" in latin) that really is a red flag to look for Friday on my test. So this really was studying.

4 comments:

Tiny Shrink said...

So as long as you also thought about checking the baby's glucose after birth, to watch out for hypoglycemia, and about the consequences of 12 c-sections for MONSTROUS babies on a uterus (previa, accreta, rupture), you've studied ob/gyn AND peds, all in one article about a woman who doesn't get very good prenatal care, apparently.

Tiny Shrink said...

Oh, and good luck on step 2!

Ashley said...

Ginormous baby is right! I don't think AJ even weighs that much yet and he's 9 months old!

Brian said...

I'm a little late here, but you lessons from the ER post in August is the best thing I've read in about a month.
I'm Steven and Mindy's brother...now we've met...