Just had very strange call from the midwife

[listsandbudgets]

Demanding to know why I'd missed lots of ante natal appointments and my 20 week scan and saying she was coming to see me tomorrow morning. After a slightly stunned silence I said I thought maybe she'd got the wrong person as I wasn't pregnant. According to her records, I'm 21 weeks pregnant. She's really concerned as I'm classed as high risk (true)

She had the right person - right date of birth, address, name and she was the same lovely midwife I had when I was pregnant with DS and DD. I remember her well she's a lovely woman.

She was absolutely mystified by my insistence that I am not so far as I know 25 weeks pregnant... but not quite so mystified as me by the news that I am.

DD is 16 and DS is very nearly 10 - I'm not planning another

Data protection gone wrong !!

@kateandme Presumably if someone booked in for a scan appointment and had earlier contact with the midwives - someone is/was pregnant, just not me!!

hmmm....wonder if someone has borrowed your identity? it happens all the time... not usually for pregnancy....but maybe someone who is not supposed to be in the UK?

The devil in me would have refused to engage, refused to answer the door and let her call welfare or whatever, because I'm not a fan of the NHS and their dogmatic attitudes and no way would I be wasting my time dealing with their mistakes. But I can understand if you've actually got children living at home why you might want to do that. I just think its incredibly invasive not to believe a woman when she clearly tells a nurse that she is not pregnant and that it is an admin letter.

My friend recently went for physio in Madeira and was asked to confirm she wasn't pregnant. She's 68.

Whilst I don't disagree with the thought behind this, imagine the flak that they would receive if the OP was in fact pregnant but refusing to engage for whatever reason? Something bad happens and it's in all of the papers that "they just believed them when they said they weren't pregnant and the baby died as a result". There's no winning sometimes

Mix ups do happen - I got a copy of a letter sent to my GP from an oncologist a few years ago saying that I was a 64-year-old woman with breast cancer (I was a 41-year-old woman who hadn't been to any breast cancer screenings). It had my name and address in the top but then another name in the body of the letter, so I contacted the trust to say there'd been a data breach, and they were very confused.

@pteradactyl that's more or less the explanation she gave - they have to check. To be fair if it had been a different midwifeor I'd needed to be in work / elsewhere, I may not have been as co-oprerative about it but I wasn't going to slam on the door on someone who'd helped me so much in the past. It's much easier if she just sees me, ticks whatever box she has to tick to say I'm certainly not pregnant and then tries to resolve the mystery of who is.

Friend went for a medical for a job she was getting and it came back with her having loads of things wrong with her.

She lost the job. By the time she could get an appointment with her doctor weeks had passed and the doctor listened to her heart, took her blood pressure and they were perfectly normal and referred her for a blood test again for all the things it said she had wrong with her which all came back clear.

She presumed it was a mix up and someone somewhere was walking around with cholesterol, blood pressure and heart rate through the roof and a failing liver but with a letter saying they are were in perfect working order.

School dc went to had an exam to get into. Two boys had the same name and birthdate. One passed , one failed. They told the wrong boy he had failed, Thankfully the mistake was realised before he started and he got his place. The other boys parents had already decided to send him to another school, so no harm done in the long run.

No-one bails me out at my work though. If I make an mistake, I take responsibility. Its highly intrusive and a breach of your right to bodily autonomy. And what if you are at work? Not every woman is potentially pregnant all the time.

Would it be possible that someone used your name?

Working in covid vaccine centre we had similar, same 3 names, same dob, lived in different houses on same street. We couldn't do the booster as it said he'd already had it but he definitely hadn't, he told us about the neighbour and we could only think that it was added to the wrong record when that man had his booster! We would take name/dob and confirm street/gp so easy to see how that could have happened, although he wasn't local so it wasn't likely we'd made the error.

Surgeries are weird. My midwife once chased me up to book an appointment. Only it was not me she called. Somehow she called my cousins cousin. I'm on her mums side this was her cousin on her dad's side. I also live in the area my midwife is in she called this cousin who lives over 150 miles from where I am to book my appointment. This cousin was a male. Although somehow his number was in my medical records. Turned out to be a phone number we had when I was about 5 when I asked my mum. Very freaky when he contacted me to say my midwife was trying to get hold of me to book my first appointment. He knew I was expecting before I did as I had bloods taken due to being unwell with suspected kidney issues, the midwife was following up because once I felt better I didn't check in to get my results. So long as you had no recent blood work your safe.

I once went to pick up DH’s and my prescription from the chemist. You gave your name, they fetch the bag from the shelf, then ask you to confirm your postcode before handing it over. When I got home, DH opened his bag, pulled out the contents and said “this isn’t what I normally have.” It was a completely different type of medication.

So we looked at the label on the bag. It was for someone with the same first name and a similar-but-different surname (thing Woodward and Wildwood) and the address was about 10 houses away from us, so same postcode.

I took the bag back to the chemist and said that I had been given someone else’s medication, explaining that the name was similar and postcode the same. The pharmacist looked slightly alarmed as she took the packet from me.

Next time I went, they had started asking for address and postcode before handing drugs over.

Mix ups do happen, especially with similar names. There’s a dental nurse at my practice who has my maiden name - I commented on that and we both said we’d never met anyone else with that name - then she saw my record and we have the same birthday just 10 years apart!

Glad it’s confirmed you’re not up the duff OP!

@unicornglittersprinkles 3 years pregnant, man oh man.

You wouldn't want that.

I had to ask DH to tie my shoelaces towards the end. Can you imagine?

Camels and giraffes both carry their young for 13 to 15 months, and elephants top the charts at 22 months.

Apparently there was a lady called Beulah who was pregnant for a year in 1945 (so says Google...not sure of biological accuracy there).

Completely misses point of thread. Was the mystery ever solved?

Around 10 years ago, I saw a doctor in Norfolk when on holiday there. Roughly yearly, something happens to my gp records in the West Midlands, and they tell me I need to deregister from the surgery as I now live in Norfolk. The last few times they've phoned me up laughing to say that the letter has been sent out but to ignore it, and they'll fix the record again. I was recently referred by my gp to the hospital in Birmingham, once there they commented that it was weird to be referred to a hospital so far from Norfolk...

But a woman doesn't have to accept medical care she doesn't want (or need).
I opted out of NHS care at 16 weeks. It wasn't a bit of bother.

Identity theft?

But if you opt out of medical care at 16 weeks, how did you get the baby registered with hospital, and then the registrar?

I can only imagine opting out would send alarm bells ringing for MWs and SW. That your MH is at risk and therefore the baby is at risk.

Perhaps Buzzin opted to have private medical care and had her baby in a private hospital, under a consultant?

Mix up’s definitely happen,I went to collect a prescription, it wasn’t there as I was expecting, the assistant says we have got this one here for you, I said what is it, iron tablets, I said I have never needed iron tablets, rang surgery, was told by a very grumpy receptionist that yes, dr had discussed it with me at the consultation etc, I said no, that’s not right, asked GP to call me. My record had been mixed up with another patient.

Apparently there was a lady called Beulah who was pregnant for a year in 1945

Bet her husband just happened to be away about three months into her pregnancy...

Fraud on maternity allowance claims is really high. I’d be tempted to call DWP to check someone hasn’t used your id to make a claim