First Midwife Visit

So, I never reported on my first midwife visit.  I was very worried about it, but it ended up being very nice and I really like my midwife.  I only wish I could remember her name without having to look it up.  Oh well, I guess I will get to know her better over the next several months.  That's a thing that is actually different than back home.  In the US we go to a OB and get to know him or her through our pregnancy.  Then the OB delivers our baby at the hospital.  We don't really expect to see them during labor, but we expect to see them during delivery and have had many chances to talk about delivery with them ahead of time.   Here in England we see the midwife through pregnancy, and then a delivery team takes over at the hospital.  Unless there is a complication there is a good chance I'll never see an OB, although I'm not sure if one shows up for delivery.  I actually don't mind not seeing an OB at all.  I'm happy with nurses and midwives, but I am very unhappy about having no relationship with the people who I will be in the delivery room with.  It sounds very much like luck of the draw if you get a group of people who are on the last hour or their shift, or who don't like my accent, or who are sick of self important first time mothers.  Now, I have not had a single bad experience with the kindness of the medical staff so far, so I'm trying not to be scared, but I wish I had a previous relationship with those who are going to help me through labor and delivery.  For example, I want to try to have a natural birth, but I am very flexible and willing to concede to the experts.  That said, I want to know my experts and trust they are not just trying to speed things along.  That will be very difficult to analyze while in labor, so I am trying to figure out how to handle this.  I have been looking into doulas as potential cultural translators for me in the delivery room.  Like maybe I can get to know a doula and then the doula can help me decide if I should let them rupture my membranes even though I would really prefer to wait it out.  I just don't want to be inflexible in the delivery room, but I also really want to connect with this delivery, I want every second of the experience to be as special and lived as possible.  I'm not sure that made sense.  I really believe in a woman's natural ability to birth a child.  I would like the chance to do that.  I would like to experience the bonding hormones and the chance to experience the endorphins, but I don't want to be so inflexible that I don't listen to medical advice if the advice is to take some drugs or accept a c-section.  I am just scared to lose my power in the delivery room in an inappropriate way.  I'm totally comfortable giving up my power though if it is best for me or baby.  I'm just nervous about navigating those waters.  Speaking of waters, I have been thinking very seriously about a water birth.  I'm not so much interested in a water birth because I care about water, but because I think it might be a way to keep all those wires and other devices off me and the baby.  It would also help me move around and not feel pressured to be on a delivery bed.  Anyways, I totally digress from the topic I set out to talk about.  The midwife was very nice, she told me that unless my BMI was over 35 that she is not the least bit worried about my weight (my biggest concern), and gave me a whole bunch of pamphlets and paperwork to fill out.  The pamphlets are as good as any book and I'm glad I haven't gone over the top on buying books.  It included a little booklet called Emma's Diary which is the fictional diary of a pregnant woman through her pregnancy.  The midwife said that Emma must be about 85 years old by now because they have been giving out her diary forever.  I read it and it was very modern, but I was really touched by the idea that they've been keeping these diaries for pregnant women for so long.  I would really like to find past Emma's Diaries to learn more about what women 50 years ago were expecting and being told.  It is really amazing and it is nice to feel a historical connection like that while I'm so far from home.  The midwife had an assistant who kept bopping in with more paperwork and then retreating to the back of the room to shuffle through paper.  I thought she was pretty funny and the two inundated me with information and I felt much happier leaving the appointment.  Of course, they never confirmed the pregnancy, which I found disconcerting, but I guess totally reasonable.  I mean, I know I'm pregnant, I asked questions about symptoms, why waste the resources on a pregnancy test.  Saving resources is just one of the many things I'm learning about while outside the American healthcare system.  Oh, they also told me to make a dental appointment because dental work is free while your pregnant!  I think I'm going to wait until I'm done gagging for that, but that is really nice.  I wanted her to listen to the baby's heartbeat, but she said she wouldn't hear anything.  I looked on the internet and it said that midwives often don't listen for it until 16 weeks because if they look for it sooner and don't find it it can be very distressing for the mother.  This is the part of cutting costs I really hate.  I really needed to feel like something was alive inside of me.  I didn't need a heartbeat, I really wanted an ultrasound, but that doesn't come until 12 weeks in England, unless there is an emergency, which we had, and I'll talk about in the next post.