On the Up Side

Today I had my doctor's appointment to follow up on the bleeding I had Saturday.  I was a little disappointed with the care I received.

First of all, I am 4 weeks and 3 days pregnant today and going into the appointment today, I didn't expect an ultrasound or much else that happened.
When I walked in the room and saw the ultrasound machine, I wondered why she would do an ultrasound knowing how early I am in the pregnancy.  Then I thought, "Maybe they do it anyway in case you're further along than you think or there is some other cause of the bleeding that they can see."  Makes sense.  I definitely knew I was only 4 weeks and assumed that it would be too early to see anything, but was interested to see what the ultrasound would show.

My doctor came in and began asking questions about the pregnancy.  She asked if we were using any contraceptives and things like that.  She did not ask how I felt about being pregnant.  She did, however, ask if I wanted to "continue the pregnancy."

I was flabbergasted.  I wanted to say, "Well, lets see, I'm here out of concern for the health of my pregnancy.  I'm worried about the bleeding and am seeking blood work as reassurance. Do you think I want to continue it? No I would not like an abortion!"

She proceeded to do the ultrasound.  I expected her to say, "Keep in mind you're very early still.  Let's see what we can see, but don't be alarmed if we don't see anything yet."  What she actually said was, "Let's see what we have going on." Not horrible I suppose.

As I expected, nothing displayed on the screen, no sack and especially no baby.  Then I expected her to say, "We aren't seeing a baby, but you are only 4 weeks and we usually ask you to come in at 7 weeks that way could expect to find something, but today it's just too early."

Instead she said, "I see the uterine lining is thickening, which could be in preparation for pregnancy.  However, I am not seeing anything else.  You got a positive pregnancy test at home?"

"Yes. Three actually."

As she continued to search around in my uterus for a baby, she said, "When we don't see anything on the ultrasound that could mean that possibly the pregnancy isn't going to continue.  Sometimes you can get a positive pregnancy test even if the pregnancy doesn't continue.  The other possibility is an ectopic pregnancy."

I was stunned that she jumped to such pessimistic conclusion so early on.  I thought it was foolish of her to expect to see something on the ultrasound and then to suggest the pregnancy was more likely than not, going to terminate.

She really didn't leave me any reason to feel hopeful that things could still continue normally.  She was more certain that not seeing anything on the ultrasound today meant that I was not going to have a full term pregnancy.

Her suggestion to me was to wait a couple of weeks to see if baby gets bigger and that way we'd know if the pregnancy was ectopic or not.  On the other hand she said I could do blood work.  It was up to me.

I opted to do blood work (that was all I wanted to do in the first place.)

Then she said, "You'll need to repeat the blood work on Wednesday, unless of course it's a negative, then in that case we don't care what the numbers do."

I have never been especially fond of this doctor (she's been my OB since Mac's pregnancy), but I think this was the final straw for me with her.
On the up side, I called and got my beta results this afternoon and hoped for at least a 57 (my number with Adrian).  I a 245!!!

According to my doctor we like to see the number double (490), but at least increase by half (367.5).

We shall see.