babyblog

My first appointment

Today was the first 'proper' appointment at the High Risk Clinic at the hospital. Starting at 9.30am the first thing I went through was 'Registration' which involved doing a ton of paperwork with a very nice Nurse. We had a big chat about my experience of birth in London (bad) and my hopes for here.

One of the first things she asked me was whether I'd considered Genetic Screening (checks for Downs Syndrome and similar) tests for the baby. Well I had, with great treipdation. When we were in London we were lucky to have a 'Nuchal' scan which involved an Ultrasound at around 12 weeks which looked for issues in the babies spinal cord and predicted the likelihood of a neural tube defect (very low, in our case). People not so lucky as to have this test available to them were offered the AFP Blood Screening test, a blood test which makes similar calculations based on the amounts of various proteins in the mothers blood. I know *alot* of people who've had false-positive results with this blood test including my sister in law, which then left them with 2 or 3 weeks of sheer terror while they had to go through the frightening process of an Amniocentesis and wait for the results to confirm whether the tests were accurate. Needless to say, none of them were.

I expressed my concerns to the Nurse and she explained that they have a new test here which combines both the scan and some blood-work to predict the possibility. Instead of an 8% chance of being wrong, it goes down to 2%. So I decided to go for it - my scan will be next week on Tuesday.

She also booked me in for my 18 week scan which'll be on March 10th. They even offer a VHS Tape of the Ultrasound if you want one - how cool is that! And finally some blood work, and a tour of the Labour & Delivery ward much further into the pregnancy.

Oh - and she told me that as I had D 5 yrs ago they wouldn't rule out an induction as it's been long enough that I'm unlikely to burst! She also told me that they'll induce me at a 'maximum' of 38 weeks, possibly sooner, due to the diabetes and the Protein S Deficiency.

After all the various bits of paperwork were filled out I was then taken to see another Nurse who checked my weight and my blood pressure, and asked for a wee sample.

Following this was a visit with the Endocrinologist (Diet Doc). Very nice guy who had done a residence in London and knew it well. Also knew alot about Protein S Deficiency which was very reassuring (not many people know about it). We had a good chat about it. He checked some more vitals and I was on my way.

Next stop - the Dietician. We went through my blood sugar results and my diet sheet and she was reasonably happy with them. She said that in the case of it dropping below 4, she's not overly worried but I could have a drink of Orange Juice to bring it back up. I asked her too what to do when I get that irresitable pang of hunger when I'm not 'supposed' to eat. EAT! she said. Cool.

Finally I was given appointments to return in 2 weeks time to see them again + the OB who I didn't end up with time to see today and sent to the Lab to do some blood work. They wanted to take some out of my arm and check my blood sugar, and then have me test it with my little machine, and compare the two results to make sure my machine is working properly. That done, I was finally able to come home. A long old day!

Posted by katie at January 22, 2004 06:10 PM