My wife is a couple of months pregnant and has a routine appointment scheduled tomorrow.
Today the doctor’s office called and asked her to come in right away, because there was something on the ultrasound that she needs to talk about. :eek:
The person who called said that the doctor didn’t specifically say there was anything to worry about, and I did my best to reassure my wife before she went down, but I can admit that I’m a little freaked out. The *least *terrifying scenario I can imagine is “Hey, you’ve got twins!” which would be pretty terrifying anyway, but all I got.
I know we’ll have an answer one way or another in a few hours, but still… please tell me about the time you received a call just like this and everything turned out to be just peachy. Please?
I’m mystified. I can’t think of very much that would be happening at that point in the pregnancy that would be so urgent… and that includes most of the bad things I can think of. An ectopic pregnancy wouldn’t be on a regular ultrasound at all, twins and even triplets aren’t an emergency at this point, a molar pregnancy or a blighted ovum ditto, it’s too early for placenta previa, even if there was no heartbeat and she was going to miscarry I just can’t see the urgency of having her come in one day early.
One possibility is that she has a condition… I can’t for the life of me remember the name of it, maybe hematoma?.. that can bleed out an alarming amount of blood but doesn’t hurt the baby. They may want to see her to prevent her from freaking out if that bleeding happens. Not that MY clinic would be so considerate, but I guess it’s possible.
I’ll put my money on “come in a day early so we can talk to you about your ultrasound because Doctor has something more important to take care of - early tee time - on the originally scheduled date”…
She had her appointment and texted me something that wasn’t very illuminating. Apparently nothing to do with the ultrasound at all, but her hormone levels don’t show a huge increase between tests, though that probably just means she’s peaking out and there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.
Doesn’t need to go in tomorrow now - looks like it was just bumped up for the doctor’s convenience. I guess it’s easy to lose sight of what kind of anxiety that was bound to produce – either that or her G.P. is taking kickbacks from the cardiologist she sends referrals to.
It is so easy, when you’re pregnant, to find things to freak out about!
I remember, with my first two pregnancies, I had low-level morning sickness in the first trimester. With the third pregnancy, I had none. But, as was the style at the time (almost 12 years ago, don’t know how they’re doing it now), the doc didn’t want to see me in the office until I was 14 weeks along.
Then, I was over my best friend’s house (she was pregnant at the same time), reading one of her parenting magazines, and the mag said that morning sickness was actually a sign of a healthy placenta. So of course, I immediately began the task of convincing myself that my placenta wasn’t healthy. . . and it was still two weeks before my doctor’s appointment! Add to that, the doc said he wouldn’t be able to listen to the baby’s heartbeat with a regular OB stethoscope, because of all the scarring on my uterus from two previous C-sections, and I’d have to get an ultrasound. I can still remember how relieved I was when I saw a healthy beating heart on that ultrasound!
BTW, that ‘scary pregnancy’ is now the healthy, 11YO Doper-to-Be, mudgirl.
But wow, I think I’d look into changing doctors–this is not an area I’d be very forgiving of miscommunications in. Bumping an appt is one thing, but messages that say one thing and make you worry are quite another thing. Trust is huge here–our last pregnancy, our OB wasn’t so great, so when we got pregnant again, we changed OBs and the difference is night and day and wonderful.
As a husband / father in five pregnancies (three live births and two miscarriages, with our first child dying of birth defects) do not underestimate the power of pregnant women to mishear information. The doctor’s office could very well asked if she could come in today instead of tomorrow and your wife filled in the rest.
As others have posted, it’s just natural, the hormones help cause a great deal of worrying. With our background, there were sometimes where every sneeze was a cause for panic.
I asked my sister what the best thing to do was in these situations, and she said that she liked to hear “I think it will be OK” or “I’m sure it’s going to be fine.” There isn’t really anything you can do about most problems and worrying won’t help, but saying that doesn’t help.
I recommend reading a couple of books on pregnancy, so you can sound reassuring that “it happens a lot, but people are fine.” The most important thing is for you to remain calm and positive.
I’m not sure what you mean by “regular ultrasound” but exotic pregnancies are certain seen on standard first trimester pelvic ultrasounds. How else would one be diagnosed?
I think Tokyo Player may be onto something, actually. Her doctor is actually pretty awesome.
In the post mortem of the event after work, it seems that the admin did indeed ask her if she could come in today, and that she said the doctor needed to talk to her about an ultrasound. (My wife had just had her first for this pregnancy on the 21st.) Jump immediately to: “What could be on the ultrasound that can’t wait until tomorrow?”
Turns out that the doctor was just following up on routine tests, and the only context she brought up ultrasound in was “Have you had an ultrasound?” The report hadn’t found its way back to her yet, which is probably reassuring because evidently that get back right away if there’s the wrong number of heads or anything like that. I’m not in a hurry to blame the admin for miscommunication, because my wife came out West five years ago and didn’t speak much English before that.
The urgency wasn’t really there, either - the doctor actually asked her when her next appointment was scheduled. “Uh… tomorrow.” She does still have to turn up for that, as it turns out.
Norinew, I don’t think it’s just women that get themselves worked up into hysterical states. I had practically convinced myself that it was twins. “BUT WE CAN’T AFFORD TWINS! WE’RE BONED!”
I was 38 when I had mudgirl; as you may know, the odds of having twins goes way up after a maternal age of 35; a friend of mine said to me (I was about 4 months along at the time) “So, maybe it’ll be twins! What about that?” I said “Well, I’ll tell you, it’ll be tough, but I’m going to have to decide which one of them to sell on eBay”
My friend who was pregnant the same time as me, it was her first baby. All through the pregnancy, she kept saying “I wouldn’t mind twins”. Well, her daughter was born about five weeks after mine. We had quite a few times where one of us would watch both babies for a couple of hours, so the other could get some rest, or hell, even just a long shower! After one such session, she looked at me and said “Boy am I glad it wasn’t twins!”
Here’s hoping everything goes smoothly for you two from here on out! (Which won’t keep you from worrying, of course, but it helps!)
Meh, we had twins. Not so bad, actually. About 20% worse than a singleton, I’d estimate…just make sure that when one is up, the other is up, when one is fed, the other’s fed, too.
Larry Mudd please remember we live in a fear based society and there’s money to be made in prolonging that fear. (Is the house sterile! IS my kid developing at a normal rate? DO I HAVE EVERYTHING I NEED TO MAKE MY CHILD A SUCCESS!!! OHMYGOD! MY LITTLE SNOWFLAKE DOESN’T CARE FOR FAUST!!!)
I remember coming to and realizing I was weighing the relative merits of a test for Downs syndrome (risk 1:200) vs the Amneo having a 1:250 risk of causing a spontaneous abortion. With odds like that, it’s best to just leave things alone and quit stressing over everything you can stress about.
The kids were 5 weeks early, and one needed surgery, two weeks after birth, for Pyloric Stenosis…Both were on oxygen for three weeks or so. They are both, now, fine. But the complications they had couldn’t be determined at the initial ultrasound, and the stuff we freaked out over didn’t happen.
And you will be the Worst Parents Evar if you don’t spend $3200 a month on Le Petite Academé por le Orphan for daycare.
Well, there is a lifeform growing in her abdomen, siphoning off blood and nutrients. And there’s a large mass of blood-filled tissue attached to it. But those are really the only things to worry about, she’ll be fine.
)
