Thanks for coming back and I hope your Christmas and boxing day were a great experience and lovely.

As we are now somewhat passed our half way point, I thought it would be useful to share my experience of the Mid-Wife experience as the pregnancy has progressed.

Unfortunately though, there isn’t a great deal to report on this at all. The process was a bit of let down for me primarily I think because of my expectations.

If you remember in my posting on the 26th of December 2013, I confirmed that we had been discharged back into our GP care as the 7 week IVF scan revealed a viable pregnancy.
Our GP then referred us to our local community midwifes as part of our community care for standard pregnancies.

Having heard lots of raving reviews of the midwife service available in my community, called my on call midwifes. I have to confess that my perception of their responses to my initial esquires did not leave me with a warm filling. It took a number of tries to receive a response from one of the midwifes. An appointment was then made for me to see the midwife, not within the “see before 10 weeks of pregnancy” guidelines available. This was at nearly 11.5 weeks of pregnancy. The nice part was that the first appointment was a home visit by the midwife.
And boy! Did I get a bit of a shock when the midwife turned up! She looked like she was not a day past 18 if that. I knew that that I was officially and irrevocably old. It kind reminded me of the policemen who controlled the crowds the Japan vs Egypt Olympic football match held at Old Trafford the summer of 2012. The policemen and I kid you not, looked no more that 15!
Anyway I digress. She turned out to be easy to talk to and the rest of the assessment progressed without incident.
My next appointment though had to be at the GP surgery – I had hoped that they would continue to be home visits but this was not be. The next appointment was dully scheduled and booked in for when I was 16 weeks. I turned up at the GP surgery but was told that though i had an a confirmation text from the surgery for the midwife appointment, I did not have one. Luckily the midwife had an hour slot free and they fit me into that appointment time.
But I then had to provide what I was told was the standard urine sample requirement for urine protein testing. This is a small moan but I think it is important and very relevant. While I was waiting for a good 20 minutes for the midwife to finish off with the patient before me, why was I not told that I needed to provide urine? Why waste the midwife time and mine, never that the walk from the consulting room to the loo is almost 0.25 mile long, when the time before could have been used quite productively?
Having said that the appointment itself was ok but I did not again learn anything that I did not already know before the appointment. I had somewhat expected an awakening of sorts from the midwife visits but that was not to be 🙂

I am now nearly 26 weeks along and have only had two midwife appointments even though my care is meant to be in the community! This is very disappointment for me. The fact that mine is an IVF pregnancy has made no difference to the midwife care for me during this pregnancy.

Next appointment is next week but I am not looking forward to it I have to confess.
Somehow I think I have missed hitting or “colliding with” the warm feeling special midwife service that was referenced when I first asked of the midwife service.
But I will give it another chance and see how the next one goes 🙂

See you at the next posting!
And thanks for reading.
Fialor.
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