I have decided I’m going about this all wrong. From here on out-the first words out of my mouth when meeting a new docotor will have to be,
“Hi, I am here to interview you today to see if I will allow you to be my physician. Here is what I am looking for…” and then insert my long list of needs, demands and special requests.
Somehow the doctors we go to seem to think they know exactly what’s going on, how you feel and how things are going to go-BEFORE even looking at your file. I mean what is there to look at, you’re pregnant, you gestate for 40 weeks and then give birth-nothing to look at here really….right?
And then once they look at your file, of course AFTER you are already sitting in front of them after answering “no, this is my 7th pregnancy not my first, no I HAVE NO CHILDREN” for the 3rd time…there seems to be this brief moment where you the patient think you might be able to cut through their canned, prepared, bullshit just long enough to get an honest and real response, and perhaps maybe some heart felt care but then the same stupid rhetoric pours out of their mouth–and your exam room fills up with 2 docs and 1 nurse for the remainder of your visit–as if you are a freak show.
And yet given all of that-the nurse still comes in and goes over the “new OB patient” info packet with me covering IN DETAIL to avoid soft cheeses, cold cuts, unpasteurized milk products, limit my fish intake with high mercury and drugs I’m not allowed to take while pregnant-as if I were some idiot teenager-not someone whose been ACTING AS IF THEY ARE FUCKING PREGNANT FOR 3 YEARS.
Is it really too much to ask that perhaps a nurse who encounters a patient with my history to ASK me if I would like this information?? Or maybe be so crazy as to simply state with reverse assumption, “I suppose over your 3 years of trying to bring home a baby, in which you’ve been pregnant for 13 months of, you are aware of all the pregnancy cautions by this point, is there anything you might have questions about?”
Add to that a supposed MFM high risk specialist then comes in and tells me that she is certain that in 2 weeks when I am out of the first trimester that all of my worries will disappear as I actually only have an issue with all of my pregnancies in the first trimester, proceeds to not even discuss (why would we ever have a back and forth discussion as I am apparently an idiot who knows nothing about the drugs I selected to be on and their actions on my baby) any monitoring or tapering off of drugs and instead just tells me I can stop everything at 12 weeks because “that’s when you do that”-not because we are checking any levels…and that of all of the drugs I am currently on, she wants me off the lovenox as early as possible because she sees no need for me to be on it.
I suppose because she’s so effing brilliant nay-magical (as that is what this would take-fucking magic) we are going to forget all of the alloimmune issues that have killed my last 5 babies that according to her must magically disappear when the fetus hits 12 weeks, (yeah that makes total sense) and my daughter without a brain at 15 weeks- I guess that was also a first trimester issue too hunh?? We can just forget about that as well-and all will be good and right in the world.
So good news, everything is fine, no big whoop and I can expect full mental relief of all of my worries in 2 weeks and 1 day!!!
She’s brilliant.
Really.
And a terrible Sonographer. 20 minutes of ultra sounding and she couldn’t produce even 1 image that was half as good as what the basic tech at what might be my new OB’s office (pending next weeks interview) did last week. And yes, he’s still fine, still measuring perfectly, still moving his arms and legs all around, has a midline in his brain, and lots of brain in his brain and a heart rate of 183-only we have no good pics of any of that. She even was so kind as to go 4D but got such a crappy angle it’s impossible to make out what is going on if you weren’t there.
I have decided I don’t want MFM high risk doc, and especially don’t want her. I just want an OB who gives a shit. Who realizes I am damaged, and simply can get the fact that every morning I wake up and my first thought will be to wonder if today is the day my body will take my baby away from me, and knows that I will do that for the next 211 days regardless of how perfect he looks every time we get to see him. I am hoping this isn’t an impossible thing to find-because right now it seems as insane as the idea that I will get to take this little guy home in July.