Medical bitchery
Well, I just wasted a good hour and a half of my life.
Drove to the doctor. Got there on time. Sat in a room and read a stupid parenting magazine cover to cover, for like, fifty minutes. Suddenly the nurse pops in: "Oh, well, the doctor said to tell you she doesn't do prenatal care." WTF. So I tell the nurse, "It would have been nice to know that when I made the prenatal care appointment." I ask her doesn't my primary care physician have to refer me anyway? She doesn't know, so finally she goes to get the doctor.
Turns out they don't have to refer me, but it can take weeks for a change in my primary care person (and hence my area of coverage) to go through, on account of the move. This occasioned another call to my HMO (~15 minutes) the upshot of which was "call back later." The doctor gave me the name of a doctor who does do prenatal care...and then I spent ten minutes trying to get my co-pay back from the idiot at the front desk who made the appointment in the first place.
The OB/GYN whose number the doctor gave me didn't want to see me because I wasn't 8 weeks pregnant yet (all the books say to make a doctor's appointment as soon as you know you are pregnant, argh!) but grudgingly found me a spot on the calendar for next Wednesday, at which point I will be 8 weeks 1 day. I thought there was supposed to be an ultrasound around this time in the gestation process, but I wasn't given any preparatory instructions, so now I'm not sure.
My mother-in-law is coming that Saturday, and we need to tell her what's going on, but I want to make sure I'm actually toting around a viable fetus before we do that. And I think, from what I hear, that I need an ultrasound in order to do that. Am I wrong? The books have nothing to say to me about when I should or should not time my ultrasounds.
Figuring out medical care is enough to send me into a depressive spiral. These fucking parenting books! "Interview a variety of providers," "go on hospital tours," "make sure you get the care you want." Do I need a fucking M.D. to be pregnant? How the hell should I know what kind of care I want? I want it not to hurt, okay? Minimal discomfort and then magical *voila baby*! And from everything I read, that ain't going to happen, so basically I'm choosing between kinds of pain, which just freaks me right the fuck out.
My partner says I have the lowest threshhold for pain/discomfort of anyone he knows. And it's probably true. I've never broken a bone, I whine if I get a papercut, I squirm and complain in small airplane seats, and I come home early from work if my cramps are too bad. I have enough to deal with with my cyclical depressions and bullshit without having my body be in pain. So this whole natural-v-medical birth thing is just kind of like, "huh?" As far as I can tell, they both hurt. Period. One hurts with someone you have known for a while, and a little more flexibility. The other hurts with total strangers and more gadgetry. Um, whatever.
Though I guess if I wanted the "none of the above" option I shouldn't have gotten pregnant. But really, I never wanted to be pregnant. Don't get me wrong, I want a baby. (Actually, what I really want is twins, but that's another post.) And adoption isn't really an option I want to consider, for personal family reasons. But this pregnancy part? The part I have to suck up in order to get a little human critter of our own (who will likely tell me it hates me and I ruined its life, thirteen-odd years from now)? No glowy earth-mother reports from me, no sir. And thus far, knock on wood, I am having an easy pregnancy.
You may wonder why I am not angsting about parenting. Dude. Parenting. I know I'll screw it up sometimes, I know we'll muddle through anyway, and above all, I know that developing preconceptions about it is useless. I'll freak out when I get there, or not. But pregnancy? Here there be dragons. Shit is happening to my body and it is going to hurt and there is not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it.
Ooh. That last bit just flagged for me. Do you think I'm a control freak? DO YA THINK?! *sigh*
Drove to the doctor. Got there on time. Sat in a room and read a stupid parenting magazine cover to cover, for like, fifty minutes. Suddenly the nurse pops in: "Oh, well, the doctor said to tell you she doesn't do prenatal care." WTF. So I tell the nurse, "It would have been nice to know that when I made the prenatal care appointment." I ask her doesn't my primary care physician have to refer me anyway? She doesn't know, so finally she goes to get the doctor.
Turns out they don't have to refer me, but it can take weeks for a change in my primary care person (and hence my area of coverage) to go through, on account of the move. This occasioned another call to my HMO (~15 minutes) the upshot of which was "call back later." The doctor gave me the name of a doctor who does do prenatal care...and then I spent ten minutes trying to get my co-pay back from the idiot at the front desk who made the appointment in the first place.
The OB/GYN whose number the doctor gave me didn't want to see me because I wasn't 8 weeks pregnant yet (all the books say to make a doctor's appointment as soon as you know you are pregnant, argh!) but grudgingly found me a spot on the calendar for next Wednesday, at which point I will be 8 weeks 1 day. I thought there was supposed to be an ultrasound around this time in the gestation process, but I wasn't given any preparatory instructions, so now I'm not sure.
My mother-in-law is coming that Saturday, and we need to tell her what's going on, but I want to make sure I'm actually toting around a viable fetus before we do that. And I think, from what I hear, that I need an ultrasound in order to do that. Am I wrong? The books have nothing to say to me about when I should or should not time my ultrasounds.
Figuring out medical care is enough to send me into a depressive spiral. These fucking parenting books! "Interview a variety of providers," "go on hospital tours," "make sure you get the care you want." Do I need a fucking M.D. to be pregnant? How the hell should I know what kind of care I want? I want it not to hurt, okay? Minimal discomfort and then magical *voila baby*! And from everything I read, that ain't going to happen, so basically I'm choosing between kinds of pain, which just freaks me right the fuck out.
My partner says I have the lowest threshhold for pain/discomfort of anyone he knows. And it's probably true. I've never broken a bone, I whine if I get a papercut, I squirm and complain in small airplane seats, and I come home early from work if my cramps are too bad. I have enough to deal with with my cyclical depressions and bullshit without having my body be in pain. So this whole natural-v-medical birth thing is just kind of like, "huh?" As far as I can tell, they both hurt. Period. One hurts with someone you have known for a while, and a little more flexibility. The other hurts with total strangers and more gadgetry. Um, whatever.
Though I guess if I wanted the "none of the above" option I shouldn't have gotten pregnant. But really, I never wanted to be pregnant. Don't get me wrong, I want a baby. (Actually, what I really want is twins, but that's another post.) And adoption isn't really an option I want to consider, for personal family reasons. But this pregnancy part? The part I have to suck up in order to get a little human critter of our own (who will likely tell me it hates me and I ruined its life, thirteen-odd years from now)? No glowy earth-mother reports from me, no sir. And thus far, knock on wood, I am having an easy pregnancy.
You may wonder why I am not angsting about parenting. Dude. Parenting. I know I'll screw it up sometimes, I know we'll muddle through anyway, and above all, I know that developing preconceptions about it is useless. I'll freak out when I get there, or not. But pregnancy? Here there be dragons. Shit is happening to my body and it is going to hurt and there is not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it.
Ooh. That last bit just flagged for me. Do you think I'm a control freak? DO YA THINK?! *sigh*
posted by The Stute Fish at 14:03
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home