A Change in Plans

A couple of weeks ago, on what started out as a perfectly lovely day, I came home from the library to a message on my machine from my doctor's office. It was the receptionist telling me that Dr. W has had a family emergency and will be out of the office. Until December. She went on to say that I was being rescheduled with another doctor and I could see him a week later. Well, I was practically hysterical. First of all, I felt totally abandoned. Yeah, Dr. W pissed me off a few times with some things that he had said--but we had a plan. He knew my history (even though I felt like sometimes he forgot it), but for the most part I was comfortable with him and it was like I'd had the rug jerked out from under me. I actually felt like I wouldn't get my baby now. I had to sit down and remind myself that the baby was fine, I was still pregnant and he had to get here somehow. And secondly, I was upset because I was supposed to have an appointment the following morning that I had waited a month for. Now I had to wait another week. I'm notoriously a big weenie when it comes to sticking up for myself, but I sucked it up and called the receptionist back. I told her that I was high risk and I've already waited a month to see a doctor and under no circumstances will I wait another week to have an appointment. So she got me in the following afternoon :)

We decided that we'd give this new doctor a chance. If he wasn't willing to follow our plan, we were out of there. As it turns out, we liked him and here's an interesting bit of trivia. This was the doctor that delivered me. Now, this caused some confusion with my sister and husband who thought I meant that he did Nate's delivery. No, he delivered me. In 1974. My mom was one of his first patients that insisted on a completely drug free, natural birth. That's my hippie momma. She had all three of us without so much as a tylenol.

So, although I was suspicious of this doctor that must be 100 years old, everything is so-far-so-good. He was willing to follow Dr. W's original plan-amnio and delivery at 37 weeks-but he did talk to us about the amnio, and this is where our change of plans comes in. I've mentioned here before that I was worried about having an amnio in the first place. I really didn't have a good feeling about it. Dr. W never discussed specifics with us regarding the amnio. I know that the risks of anything going wrong with an amnio are really small. Well, 1 in 300 actually. But what I didn't realize was that because I'm Rh negative, I have a little greater risk of things going wrong with not only this pregnancy, but with future pregnancies as well.

Let me see if I can explain what has been going through my head in the past few weeks. Yes, the percentage that something could go wrong with my amnio is very small....but small percentages have not been in my favor historically. What are the chances that a miscarriage could happen after the heatbeat has been seen on ultrasound? Really small. I mangaged that last September. What are the chances of a complete abruption? Microscopic. I mean, we're talking tenths of percentages here, people. I mangaged that too. Tom and I have thought long and hard about this, but we've decided that an amnio might just be borrowing trouble. We're going to wait until 38 weeks with no amnio. Actually, we'd only be waiting 5 more days, so maybe it won't be so bad. I know that people have amnios all the time and they go just fine, but for me, we felt like this was the best choice. My doctor feels like, because of my Rh negativity, that the risk of the amnio is greater than the risk of another abruption. Tom's grandma lost two full term baby girls because of her Rh negativity. I just don't want to risk any blood transfer.

Friday, I had an ultrasound and a bio physical profile done. Everything looks great! Piglet is measuring 5lbs, 9oz and scored 8 out of 8 on his profile. My placenta is grade one, which is perfect. He's got hair and we got to have a nice long look at his face. It really looks like he has Nate's nose. We watched him open and close his eyes and mouth. He's really cute, if I do say so.
We'll schedule the surgery next week, but I think that it will be on the 17th.

So, that's all the news from here! I'm really going to try to write more before he's born. I think that I need to be getting my thoughts down, because they're all over the place right now.

Oh, and congrats Michelle on the birth of her gorgeous Natalie Rose on Friday!