Okay, so the two things that made my day hell:
First, the ultrasound tech. It was totally an accident and I don't blame her for it, but when she was doing the abdominal ultrasound she said "Oh it looks like the placenta has moved a lot!" and after she left the room so I could get ready for the trans-vag ultrasound I sat there thinking about how I might still have a chance for a homebirth, how fast I could get a birth pool and re-hire my midwife and so on. And I started to get excited at the prospect, and hopeful. Then when she came back to do the second part and actually measured the placenta vs. the cervix and everything she got real quiet, stopped being so friendly and chatty and nice and got really cold and impersonal. And I knew immediately that she knew she'd misspoke and that the measurements showed either no change or not enough to make for a safe natural birth. She left the room after the ultrasound was over and didn't say anything more to me. That hurt a lot. We had been so friendly and joking and laughing, and the fact that the ultrasound revealed disappointing news didn't mean we couldn't still be friendly.
Then the perinatologist came into the room and told me what the measurement was and that it had barely changed over the last 6 weeks, and they couldn't see that it would change within the next 4-6 weeks even close to enough to make for a safe birth and that they would go ahead and schedule me for a cesarean. Okay, I had already dealt with that and been prepared for it for the last 3 months. It was fine, no big deal. Until he dropped the bomb on me that my insurance would not cover a schedule cesarean at either of the hospitals in my city and that I would have to give birth out of state at the teaching hospital in Portland. The one that takes over half an hour for me to get to, with no parking and it is like 12 or 16 stories high and huge, where all babies go to the nursery at night and you are going to have interns and residents in charge of your care instead of real doctors.
I was PISSED. None of the midwives at my clinic had EVER mentioned this. They had me pre-register at the hospital my mom works at, the one 10 minutes from my house that I know like the back of my hand, where they have no well-baby nursery at all and I already knew half the nurses through my mom. Every time I asked one of the midwives to discuss the "what ifs" about what would happen if the previa did not resolve my concerns were brushed off and they refused to even acknowledge that a previa sometimes does not resolve. When I brought up the studies I'd read that broke it down percentage-wise I was told that I must be reading very alarmist studies because that was nonsense and nobody ever has a cesarean for a marginal previa. Never once did they feel it was necessary to mention that I would have to change hospitals and care providers at 34 weeks either!
I came home just livid, yelled and screamed for an hour about the unfairness of it, then one of the nurses from my midwives' clinic called to tell me the peri. was wrong and I could have the baby at the other hospital in my city, just not the one I'd planned on going to. I came down a few notches but I'm still pissed that nobody told me about this sooner. They're also transferring my care to the maternal fetal medicine clinic for the other hospital so I now have about 4 weeks to get to know a whole new group of doctors. I'm seriously considering lodging a complaint with the manager at the clinic because I specifically, repeatedly asked 3 different midwives to discuss the what ifs and all 3 of them brushed me off. They really dropped the ball and I really deserved to be aware of this before today.
So there it is. No more wondering, waiting, not knowing. An answer once and for all. Not the one I'd hoped for but at least I can sleep at night and not stay awake worrying and wondering.
First, the ultrasound tech. It was totally an accident and I don't blame her for it, but when she was doing the abdominal ultrasound she said "Oh it looks like the placenta has moved a lot!" and after she left the room so I could get ready for the trans-vag ultrasound I sat there thinking about how I might still have a chance for a homebirth, how fast I could get a birth pool and re-hire my midwife and so on. And I started to get excited at the prospect, and hopeful. Then when she came back to do the second part and actually measured the placenta vs. the cervix and everything she got real quiet, stopped being so friendly and chatty and nice and got really cold and impersonal. And I knew immediately that she knew she'd misspoke and that the measurements showed either no change or not enough to make for a safe natural birth. She left the room after the ultrasound was over and didn't say anything more to me. That hurt a lot. We had been so friendly and joking and laughing, and the fact that the ultrasound revealed disappointing news didn't mean we couldn't still be friendly.
Then the perinatologist came into the room and told me what the measurement was and that it had barely changed over the last 6 weeks, and they couldn't see that it would change within the next 4-6 weeks even close to enough to make for a safe birth and that they would go ahead and schedule me for a cesarean. Okay, I had already dealt with that and been prepared for it for the last 3 months. It was fine, no big deal. Until he dropped the bomb on me that my insurance would not cover a schedule cesarean at either of the hospitals in my city and that I would have to give birth out of state at the teaching hospital in Portland. The one that takes over half an hour for me to get to, with no parking and it is like 12 or 16 stories high and huge, where all babies go to the nursery at night and you are going to have interns and residents in charge of your care instead of real doctors.
I was PISSED. None of the midwives at my clinic had EVER mentioned this. They had me pre-register at the hospital my mom works at, the one 10 minutes from my house that I know like the back of my hand, where they have no well-baby nursery at all and I already knew half the nurses through my mom. Every time I asked one of the midwives to discuss the "what ifs" about what would happen if the previa did not resolve my concerns were brushed off and they refused to even acknowledge that a previa sometimes does not resolve. When I brought up the studies I'd read that broke it down percentage-wise I was told that I must be reading very alarmist studies because that was nonsense and nobody ever has a cesarean for a marginal previa. Never once did they feel it was necessary to mention that I would have to change hospitals and care providers at 34 weeks either!
I came home just livid, yelled and screamed for an hour about the unfairness of it, then one of the nurses from my midwives' clinic called to tell me the peri. was wrong and I could have the baby at the other hospital in my city, just not the one I'd planned on going to. I came down a few notches but I'm still pissed that nobody told me about this sooner. They're also transferring my care to the maternal fetal medicine clinic for the other hospital so I now have about 4 weeks to get to know a whole new group of doctors. I'm seriously considering lodging a complaint with the manager at the clinic because I specifically, repeatedly asked 3 different midwives to discuss the what ifs and all 3 of them brushed me off. They really dropped the ball and I really deserved to be aware of this before today.
So there it is. No more wondering, waiting, not knowing. An answer once and for all. Not the one I'd hoped for but at least I can sleep at night and not stay awake worrying and wondering.
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