First midwife appointment

I have not written for awhile. I meant to write last week. So much has been going on. In my last post I was writing about how I thought I was starting to get nausea. Well, there is no longer any question about that! It hit at 10w2d and it has been hanging around. The last day I felt really terrible is Friday when I was 12w2d and then I had a really good weekend with NO nausea. I was starting to think today that maybe I don't have it anymore but I felt sick after dinner tonight. Almost every day I've been sick it's been in the afternoon and evening. One morning last week or the week before I did throw up once. Sometimes brushing my teeth and tongue can really set off my gag reflex and that's what happened. Last night I couldn't even finish flossing. I was just gagging so bad.

We bought a baby shower gift for our friends whose shower was yesterday and while I was at Babies R Us I picked up some Preggie Pop drops for myself. They help, at least while they're in my mouth.

Tomorrow is our sequential screening test at 1:30 in the afternoon. I'm very anxious. It will be our first ultrasound in almost three weeks. I know for many women that is very frequent but starting out with an RE meant I got lots of ultrasounds and got very spoiled by it. The ultrasounds were all vaginal and I got to hear the heartbeat at the last of them.

I am very anxious about tomorrow because last Wednesday (4/27) I had my first midwife appointment. Earlier in the month (4/5) I had a consultation and I decided to book the midwife even though I wasn't 100% sold. I felt like she had an issue with my weight and kept making comments that were annoying me. Well, after this week I'm really considering switching. We had a good appointment up til the point when she said she'd try to hear the heartbeat. I laid back and she used the fetal doppler over my belly/pelvis region. It was definitely a different tool than the RE had used and being used differently. She said at 12 weeks she might not be able to hear anything. I was fine with that. I knew it probably wasn't as sensitive as the one my RE had used and not as close to the "source." She kept trying and was only picking up my heartbeat. My husband mentioned how we had heard it before at the RE's office and I don't know if that made her worried but then she started asking me if I was bleeding (no) or if I was nauseous (not at that moment). While she continued searching for the heartbeat somehow the subject of my progesterone came up. I mentioned how I always thought it was low but the RE always said it was fine. She asked what it was and I told her always between 12 and 16 until my last appointment at 10 weeks and it was 17 then. She said that was low in her opinion, she likes it to be about 20. I told her it was that low even with supplementation in the form of Endometrin suppositories. She asked if I was still on them and I told her they said to take it to 11 weeks but I had about 10 left and they were so expensive I didn't want to just toss them. I continued to take them twice per day til that Saturday (11w3d) I think and then for the next four days I just took one per day with my last one being at 12 weeks. She said that was very good that I continued to take them and I told her I might have continued but I was out of them and had no refills. At that point she had stopped trying to hear the heartbeat and started working on drawing blood. She said she was going to test my progesterone as well and I asked her if it was low if she'd want to supplement still. And her response was, "Well, we have to make sure your baby is OK first." So she went from telling us it was perfectly normal if we couldn't hear the heartbeat and once she couldn't find it and we had the progesterone conversation she is acting like there is a potential problem.

She gave us a prescription for sequential screening and some genetic counseling and then told me I could come back in a week if I wanted to try to hear the heartbeat again, or I could get an ultrasound. Teary-eyed I said I'd like an ultrasound and she told me that I would be getting one with the sequential screening. At that point I had been waiting 48 hours already for the hospital to call me back (I already knew I was going to be getting the prescription so was trying to be proactive about getting an appointment since I was already nearing 12 weeks). So I was very anxious about how long it was going to take them. They wound up calling me that afternoon and saying the earliest they had was May 3rd which sounded so far away. I was so in la-la land I didn't realize that was less than a week away and we were at the end of April! So I'm going tomorrow.

Needless to say when we left the midwife, my husband and I were very upset. We went outside when we were done and he said, "You are not miscarrying. You are not!" The good news is I have symptoms still and I have absolutely no spotting. I'm doing everything I can possibly do at this point and there is no reason to worry (except she put it in my head that something could be wrong). So it's been a long six day countdown from last Wednesday until tomorrow but here I am in the last 24 hours now.

I wrote on a couple message boards about what happened and I was flooded with suggestions to find a new midwife. In addition to the scare she has made so many comments about my weight. Before even hearing my medical history she deemed me unfit to give birth in her birthing center and immediately told me I had to give birth in a hospital due to my weight. If I got in the whirlpool I could get stuck and no one would be able to lift me out. Or she wouldn't be able to see or feel (I forget) the placenta due to my "subcutaneous fat tissue." Those were from our consultation. Then during the first appointment she was going to take my blood pressure and said she had to go get the "bigger cuff." I don't see why she had to announce that. Then she came back with it and told me it was going to be tight because my upper arm was so "wide" and then when it came back at 118/84 she said, "Is it always like that?" as if surprised my blood pressure could be good when I must be the size of a whale! Also when she asked me my pre-pregnancy weight and then my weight that day at 12 weeks she was so surprised they were exactly the same and told me I could actually lose weight. (Well, thanks, but that's not my goal now. I've spent the last 7 years trying to keep the weight off after a great weight loss but it has all crept back on and then some! My goal right now is to have a healthy baby at a healthy weight!)

All these women and their support gave me the courage I needed to start looking for a new one (not to mention the fact that I think my husband hates the woman!). I'm still not 100% sure I'll switch, not because I feel she deserves another shot or because I don't feel I deserve her attitude/treatment, but for the simple fact that there are few midwives around here. One I called has the same rule she does (BMI over 30 = hospital birth only, no exceptions) so that was out. I was going to call another one (practice of 3) but read terrible reviews online as well as heard a bad (secondhand) account of how they are, so figured that could be a last resort. I even called my OB/GYN's office even though that is not what I want but figured maybe with a doula a hospital/OB birth could be OK. However, they are already triple and quadruple booked for all their appointments and they are quite far from my work (30 minutes) so I can see my having to miss tons of work with all the prenatal appointments. I then checked my insurance carrier's provide list and found one midwife I never heard of. She is not that close either but I read some great reviews of her online (although my current midwife has rave reviews online as well so I'll take that with a grain of salt) and I called and have a consultation with her next Monday. If it feels like a better fit, I'll switch.

I'll update tomorrow, I'm hoping with good news from our ultrasound! Good night.