ChezPerky

I spent Sunday night/Monday morning at Labor & Delivery for contractions and other fun stuff. Tuesday I had my already-scheduled OB appointment. The doctor said that the goal is to keep me out of the hospital as long as possible (I hadn’t known that was on the table, but okay…). I told him I spent Sunday night at the hospital, and he responded “Oh, really?” Call me picky, but while I realize it’s a large practice, wouldn’t it make sense for there to be some sort of notation in my chart so that the other doctors who see me know before they walk into the room with the patient?

He declared that I’m measuring just right and the baby’s heartbeat was fine, so he said, “I guess that’s it.” Um, not so much – I had a list of questions both from myself and things the home health care company wanted to bring up with him. Virtually all of my questions were met with “That’s a good question for you to ask the perinatologist tomorrow.” There’s a national shortage of adult multivitamins for infusion, and apparently Folic Acid (for the IV) is also in short supply right now, so the home health nurses wanted me to ask him to write me a script directly for the MVI (Seth can get it filled – it’s good to have connections) and to ask if it’s okay to do the folic acid every other day, or every few days, etc. Good question for the perinatologist, apparently. I asked about the extreme pain in my pelvic bone which is making it excruciating to walk (especially stairs) and that was met with “Hmmm.” I asked him what my threshold should be in terms of calling the office or on-call doctor since if I used the standard “more than 4 in an hour” rule, I’d be calling every hour. Apparently, that was also a good question for the perinatologist, which I don’t understand, because if I call someone at 2 in the morning, then it’s not going to be the perinatologist I wake up – it’s going to be HIS practice members that get woken up. Pretty much everything was “Talk to the perinatologist.”

The one thing that did get resolved was that he said, “The question is, how are we going to get your glucose tolerance test done?” You got me! But since I’m eating so little, I doubt it will be an issue. But since there’s a 98% likelihood that I will throw up the glucola (sp?) , there’s not a lot of point in suffering through it. SO, I get to take my blood glucose levels 4x per day. Fun, right? Um, not so much.

So I went to the perinatologist today for cervical assessment and a growth scan (the baby’s growing just fine and kicked the transducer a fair number of times to prove it). I told the sonographer I had some questions for the doctor and she said he was over at the hospital with a sick patient. This is fine, I was happy to wait if need be, but also happy to find an alternative. So she sent his clinical nurse in to talk to me. Regarding the contraction threshold, she said I just have to use my gut. Right, because that’s going to work so well. She said that regarding the glucose tolerance test, probably the only way around it was to do blood sugar testing, but that 4x/day is probably overkill and I could just do some random BG checks. She didn’t have an answer re: the MVI and Folic acid, but said she’d check with the doctor when he got back from the hospital. Regarding the excruciating pain when I’m walking – well, she said that everything in this pregnancy is going to be more pronounced, as this is my second pregnancy and I’m older now, and… Um. Right. But it’s kind of comparing apples to oranges. The last pregnancy involved THREE baby humans. This pregnancy involves ONE baby human – so the “it’ll all be more pronounced this time around” argument doesn’t entirely fly with me. Nevermind that I know plenty of women who have had two, three, four, five, six or more pregnancies without having excruciating pain with every step just because it wasn’t the FIRST pregnancy. She recommended an abdominal binder to see if that would help. I’ll try it, but I’m not expecting miracles. She called later regarding the Folic Acid and MVI and Dr. P. was adamant that since I’m not eating/drinking more, I must have both (if they can be gotten – otherwise, well, not so sure what the answer to that is).

So I’m not a lot more enlightened than I had been Sunday night. I still don’t know whether I should call the doctor, for, say, the extreme cramps and contractions I’m having RIGHT NOW. Probably nothing to worry about since my fFN was negative, so I’m not going to freak out. I’d just like to feel better. Sigh. I’m just frustrated. I’d probably feel less frustrated if I didn’t have other things going on as well, but obviously, life moves on around me, regardless of how gross I feel.