First Prenatal Appointment; Feelings

My appointment this morning went well. The thing I’m most concerned about is my blood pressure, but it was normal (something like 108/68) and they didn’t even have to use the XL blood pressure cuff like they usually do. Woo-hoo!

My weight went up a pound, but one pound for 13.5 weeks seems pretty darn good to me. Plus, I was wearing boots so who knows how heavy those things are.

The midwife, K, told me I had a “very palpable uterus” and showed me how to feel for it myself.

We went over my medical history and I gave her a copy of my hospital records from my induction-turned-c-section with Wesley, and K said they’d photocopy what they needed out of it and then return it to me.

I was talking to a friend about this, and I feel like I’ve come full-circle with the grief cycle with regards to the c-section and arrived back at anger. Like, at first I wanted to forget that it ever happened, and then I was angry about it, and then I was wondering what I could have done differently, and I was sad, and now I’m back to being angry about a lot of stuff.

Things like:
When the midwife told me my body wasn’t very favorable for induction, she just… left it at that. She didn’t give me any indication that there was anything I could do (red raspberry leaf tea, sex, nipple stimulation, primrose oil, etc.) to help that along.
Or when Wesley was still transverse, I found spinningbabies.com myself but since they never mentioned to me that I could or should do any of those exercises to turn him, I didn’t make it a priority.
Or the fact that I was so, so terribly sick but everybody just talked in high voices and said, “Well, you SEEM okay, so… we’ll keep an eye on things” rather than being straight with me about how sick I was. It would have made the c-section MUCH less surprising.
Or that once I agreed to the c-section, the hospital basically ignored my entire birth plan (which I know is common, but still). I would have liked to nurse him in the OR and delay his bath and avoid the eye ointment, but I didn’t get to.

I’m not saying I would have had a different outcome. I might have ended up with a c-section anyway. But at least I would have known that I did everything I could, rather than there being this LIST of stuff I could have tried but didn’t because I didn’t know any better. And I’m annoyed at myself for not insisting on hiring a doula, and not getting somebody lined up for placenta encapsulation even though I wanted to do that, or taking Hypnobabies classes even though I wanted to. I was kind of laissez faire about planning the first time around, I think. I didn’t realize I’d want/need these things so badly until after I didn’t have them.

So: priority one right now is keeping my blood pressure low. Other priorities are finding a doula we’re comfortable with, completing my Hypnobabies self-study course, getting somebody to do placenta encapsulation, and TALKING THROUGH all this BS so I can get past it. Bear with me.

Comments Off on First Prenatal Appointment; Feelings