Monday, June 25, 2007

First Midwife Visit

Today I had my first visit with the midwife, and so far I am very pleased. The clinic was bright and decorated with art of either Pregnancy or Mother/Child themes. The midwife had a very positive natural childbirth attitude, and all of my questions were answered the way I wanted them to be, such as they don't require a heparin lock, and fetal monitoring is only done for the first 15 minutes when you arrive at the hospital (if you agree to it.) After that they do check the baby with the Doppler, but not nearly as often as it was when Joseph was born. This was quite a relief because with Joseph my doctor was clearly angry with me when I refused the heparin lock, and the fetal monitoring was extremely disruptive to my labor. I told the midwife a few things about the birth experience, and she also thought that my doctor had done some things that were alarmist and unnecessary. After the birth I had a bit more bleeding than normal, and my doctor panicked. One nurse actually dropped some of the tools because she was barking orders and making everyone nervous. She also ordered two bags of pitocin, the second of which they stopped pretty soon after starting it, because it wasn't necessary. The weirdest thing of all is that when I had my check up she didn't do a physical examination, and said that I could come back next for my yearly check up which was six months later.
Well, I am happy that this time around I will have a midwife instead. Next week I will have an ultrasound to make sure that I am not pregnant with twins and also to make sure of the due date. I already felt the baby move the first time two weeks ago (I was 10 weeks pregnant then,) and then again, moving a lot, a week later.) This made the midwife want to check the due date, but also since I am showing a lot already she also wants to check to see if it could be twins ( I hereditarily have a high chance of twins, on both my father's and mother's side.)

3 comments:

hucktunes said...

Congratulations, Michell. That's great news. Boy, Joseph is sure getting big.

AmeliaDollDots said...

Hello Michelle!
I just found out that I am pregnat and right away I was on-line looking at various stuff. I came across this documentry called The Business of Being Born, it is all about midwifery and home birth, so I am definatley thinking of going that route.My question is, I can't seem to find a listing of midwifes or birthing centers here in Lincoln
NE, plus I saw an article that says liscenced midwife's arn't allowed to attend home births in Nebraska, have you heard about this and can you point me in the direction of finding a good midwife. Thanks so much.
Amy K.

Michelle Liebgott-Osinga said...

Hi Amy, There is a great group of midwives here in Lincoln and their practice is called "Heart and Hands Womancare." You can find their number in the phone book, or you can probably find them through google. If you are interested in homebirth you may want to come to the May (2nd tuesday) la leche league meeting. They are going to be talking about birth in america. You can find their info by clicking http://www.lllusa.org/web/LincolnNE.html. g . There are also a couple of regular attending members there that have done homebirths here in Nebraska, and also one woman who is planning one. Hope to see you there.