My new OB/GYN is a man.

I’m typically not comfortable having a man as a gynecologist (women tend to be gentler) and I’m really not all that skippy about having a MAN guiding me through a pregnancy.  When I chose my first OB/GYN with Lukas, I made it a point to find a doctor who had been through pregnancy, labor, and childbirth herself as a personal experience.  I know that this stuff varies and no two experiences are alike, blah blah blah, but I just wanted a woman.  A kind of older woman guide for me.

Now we have an HMO and the most annoying thing about our HMO is that an OB/GYN is considered a specialist and in order to see a specialist, you have to be evaluated by a family doctor and then have a specialist recommended to you.  Yes, it’s annoying.  To make it even more irritating, the “family doctor” that Jessie chose at random from the website refused to see me until I went to another clinic to have another doctor give me a blood test to verify that I am pregnant.  I needed to make appointments and get things all in a line.  If things hadn’t gone south, I’d still be waiting to see a real OB/GYN.

But things DID go south.  I started bleeding on a Wednesday.  It wasn’t bright red blood and it wasn’t accompanied by any sort of pain or cramping so I wasn’t too alarmed since I know from my first pregnancy that this is normal.  Friday came and I was still bleeding.  I went to the emergency room.

The nurses were very nice.  I was put into a hospital gown and admitted.  Once the bureaucratic stuff was taken care of, a fast talking ER doctor came into my room.  She asked me a bunch of standard questions that had little or nothing to do with pregnancy.  Then she started asking about the bleeding problem.  Somewhere in the middle of this interview, Jessie interrupted the doctor and told me to tell her that I had HG in my first pregnancy.  Annoyed, I told Jessie that it wasn’t important right now.  (Also, I HATE IT when he tells me to tell people certain things when he could just tell them himself.  Like, we’ll be having dinner with my mom and he’ll say, “Have you told your mom X?” and it’s like, why the fuck don’t you just tell her yourself?  What the hell?)  The doctor looked confused.

“HG?” She asked.

I sheepishly informed her that I had hyperemesis gravidarum during my first pregnancy and that we need to be on guard about it happening again.  She asked me if I was feeling sick and I told her yes.

“Do you think it’s in your head?” she asked, laughing a little bit.

I felt the blood rushing to my face as I held myself back from spitting in her face.  I told her that, no, I didn’t think that it was all in my head.  We moved on quickly.

The doctor left, a nurse swept in and took three vials of blood and hooked me up to an IV saying that the doctor had ordered it since I was complaining of nausea.  I rolled my eyes and accepted the IV.  I was then ordered to urinate in a cup.

A little over an hour later, the doctor peeked into my room and informed me that they discovered that I have a urinary tract infection.  My first thought was that I really had no clue.  I felt no symptoms, nothing.  The doctor then went on to inform me that UTI’s can sometimes result in miscarriage and other injuries to a fetus.  My eyes bugged out of my head slightly.  She tried to comfort me by saying that they were going to start me on antibiotics right away and that it SHOULD be ok.

It took another 3 hours for all of my blood work to come back.  Then I had to go get an ultrasound.  The nurse rolled my bed down about eight hallways and parked me in the middle of a hall.  I just sat there in my bed waiting for someone to come get me.  A lady came out of a room and instructed me to follow her and lay down.  She tried to ultrasound in the traditional way with the paddle rubbing on the outside of my belly.  Apparently it wasn’t working so I had to have an inner probe inserted so that she could get a better look.  I laid on my back for a half an hour while she twisted and poked and said nothing to me.  The silence bothered me greatly.  I sat there in the dim room staring at the ceiling (she had the screen turned away from me) and trying not to cry.  When she was finished she told me to go back into the hallway and get back in my parked hospital bed and someone would come get me.  She said that the ER doctor would review the information before telling me anything.  Numb, I wobbled back to the abandoned bed and waited 15 minutes for a nurse to come get me.

They wheeled me back to my room.  My mom came in not long after.  I tried not to cry.  She talked to me and tried to keep my mind off of what was going on.  The doctor came back in and explained to me about what was going on.  Words like “minor hemorrhage” and “viable pregnancy” were said.  Apparently things were fine.

“You need to have another ultrasound in a week and you need more blood tests,” the doctor said.  “Who is your OB?”

I explained to her the weird situation we were in where the doctor wouldn’t see me until I had a doctor give me a piece of paper saying that I was indeed pregnant.

“That is very weird.”  The doctor said.

She excused herself and came back about 20 minutes later with a stack of papers, one of which was the name and number of an OB/GYN who she had talked to on my behalf.  “Your situation is not uncommon…….people recover and have healthy babies……..he accepts your insurance…..call his office first thing Monday morning and he’ll see you that day……..here’s a prescription for that UTI………you can leave after you sign a few papers……….the situation with that other doctor makes no sense……..blah blah blah.”

I left the ER that night tired, drained, confused.  I was put on rest and “pelvic rest” for the weekend until the OB/GYN could see me.  Sunday was my birthday.  It was not my best birthday.  I was sick and could barely eat the food my mom and Fred brought me, even though I was grateful for it.  Spent most of the weekend in bed.

Monday morning the doctor was called and an appointment was set for 11 a.m. that day.  I noticed that the bleeding had stopped.  We arrived at the doctor’s office.  More bureaucratic shit.  Then I was called to the back.  Weight and blood pressure were noted.  I waited in exam room 1 for what seemed like an hour.  Then the doctor came in.  The MAN doctor.  Introductions were made, examinations were conducted.  I was then asked to dress myself and meet the doctor in his office for a chat.

He was SO nice.  Told me that, at this point, everything is looking to be on track for a normal pregnancy, except for a small tear where the egg has torn away slightly from the uterine lining.  He said that I have a 50/50 chance of having this pregnancy go full term.  While I’m not particularly happy about those odds, he made me feel very comforted.  He asked me if I had any other questions or concerns about the pregnancy.  I told him about the HG in my first pregnancy and that I was terrified of it getting to the point that it went to before and that I simply COULD NOT do that this time since I have a 2 year-old to take care of.

“That’s something we won’t wait on.”  He told me.  “I’ll go ahead and write you a prescription and take care of that and I’ll also write a prescription for a prenatal vitamin that will also help with the nausea.”

Seeing how I had just spent the past week unable to eat much and vomiting several times a day, I was ecstatic.  He didn’t look at me weird, didn’t ask to speak to my previous doctor, simply said “we’ll take care of it before it becomes a problem.”  Part of me feels like it may be society’s tendency to throw pills at all ailments without question, but a bigger part of me is just happy.

I started bleeding again yesterday.  Same as before.  No cramping.  Light.  I have to have another ultrasound on Friday and more bloodwork that day too.  I don’t like this uncertainty.

Last night, I was having a once-sided conversation with my favorite deity.  “I don’t want to lose this baby,”  I said.  “But since I really don’t have a lot of control over this, I have to have faith and trust.  Just please, please, if it’s going to end, let it end quickly.”

Hopefully a year from now I’ll look back on all of this with a smile.  Maybe then I’ll think on how dramatic I am being right now, how everything worked out fine and turned out to be NOT a big deal at all.

The shittiest thing about this situation, the shittiest thing about my attitude so far is that I really didn’t realize how much I wanted this until it became a possibility that I might not be able to keep it.  I hate that and I hate myself a little bit for not being completely happy about this from the very beginning.

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