Normally, when you go to a pregnant woman with a huge gut we think “what a bigger baby she will have inside”, but the truth is that the size of the gut has no direct relationship with the size of the baby.
The same goes for small bellies that later come out babies with very good weight. It is common for women with small guts to worry about the growth of the baby inside the uterus, but not all the guts are the same.
The shape and size of the gut depend on many factors In addition to the size of the baby, such as the position in which the baby is inside the uterus. If it is crossed the gut will be wider, while if it is upside down, it will be less.
The size of the gut also depends on the amount of amniotic fluid and the size of the placenta, regardless of the baby's weight.
The physical characteristics of the mother also influence. If it is tall, even if it has the same size of gut as a woman 20 cm shorter, visually it will appear that the tall one has a small gut and the lower one a huge one. It is a matter of proportions.
It also has to see the tone of the abdominal muscles of women. When the muscles are flaccid the gut comes out more and when they are more developed the gut looks flatter. In cases of obesity the gut can even go unnoticed.
It also influences the position of the uterus, which in some women is located backwards making the abdomen less noticeable, and the spine that if it presents a deviation will make the belly look more or less prominent.
If it is a first-time mother, the gut takes longer to notice than in subsequent pregnancies since the uterine muscle has not yet distended.
As you can see, the size of the gut does not have a direct relationship with the size of the baby. It is the ultrasounds through the measurements of the growth parameters (abdominal perimeter, cranial perimeter and femur length) that will determine if the baby's size is adequate for its stage of pregnancy.
