First antenatal apt 6 weeks away!

[Teaandcake90]

Hi all,

Recently found out I’m pregnant for the first time and used the online self referral to refer myself to antenatal services at my local hospital on Monday.

It’s now Friday and no one has contacted me but yesterday I got a slightly dodgy looking email with the initials of the trust and a link to activate my account.

I signed up to their online portal and saw there was an antenatal appointment booked for me for 21 November. This is more than 6 weeks after I submitted the referral (6 weeks yesterday).

AIBU to expect to be seen within a couple of weeks?

It’s really not - loads of people who would be seen at say, 6-8 weeks, wouldn’t then be seen at 12 weeks, because they’ll have had a miscarriage.

Well, apart from anything else, the booking-in appointment is much longer than the average 10-minute GP visit. You get tests, do BMI, give blood and urine, test for syphilis, HIV, Hep B etc. and have a lot of questions, including ones about DV, FGM, your general MH and physical health, family health history etc etc. My memory is that mine lasted about an hour. For another, it's not a one-off appointment. You're then in the system for 12-week and 20-week scans, 9 more appointments, and obvious birth arrangements. It's far more resource-heavy than a GP appointment about a minor ailment.

The as soon as possible point is the 10 week booking appointment point. Before there were at home testing kits the earliest that someone was really sure they were pregnant was after two missed periods.

10 weeks is really early and is exactly when you should be seen.

Congratulations and good luck

No it isn’t. The reality is lots of women have miscarriages early on. I’ve had 4 mc and I wouldn’t want to keep being asked for early booking appointments. They take lots of information and do blood tests etc. I honestly think many of the most vulnerable and deprived women with unexpected pregnancies are the least likely people who would access very early booking appointments, for a variety of reasons.

When you booked your first appointment did you not get an email with links and attached leaflets? I do believe I got this.

Sadly this is exactly it, around 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage before 12 weeks. That means they’d be doing 25% more booking appointments at say 4/5 weeks pregnant for pregnancies which would end in miscarriage.

Around 50-65% of those early miscarriages are due to chromosomal abnormalities and so no advice or vitamins or lifestyle changes would be able to alter the outcome.

It’s sad but it is a fact. Once you are 8/10 weeks the risk of miscarriage drops, and it drops significantly once you have a healthy 12 week scan.

@Teaandcake90 You misunderstand me - if you went into the practice (as soon as you found out) to make the booking in appointment (for 10-12 weeks) you were handed the leaflet about nutrition, so got it early as possible.

As people don’t tend to go in anymore they put that information online where it is very easily available.

This is because you’ve never had a booking appointment. They are around 1 hour 30 mins. A GP appointment is typically 10 mins. So that would be the equivalent of 9 GP appointments, and suddenly that’s not comparable at all is it?

And the nhs guidance about seeing as early as possible, means get booked in for your 10 week check and make sure it's at 10 weeks.

So don't try and book it a couple of days beforehand.

You are doing exactly what the guidelines want you to do

I remember finding out I was pregnant with my first. It’s so exciting and every day you think about being pregnant and what you need to do and it’s a very special time for you and your close loved ones. So when you realise that no one else really cares yet and won’t see you until 8-10 weeks, and that feels like a million years away, it can leave you feeling a bit deflated. Pregnancy is long. The wait for the first appointments and scan can feel like a lifetime but it’s fine. Nothing to do until then.

I'm currently pregnant and after registering my pregnancy, I was sent a link to register with Badger Notes which contained loads of reading materials, including stuff about folic acid. I was also emailed some leaflets and links about keeping healthy, diet, supplements etc

There's no need to hold an appointment to hand out leaflets imo. I felt I was given plenty of info from my trust in the early weeks.

And if you're not the sort of person who will engage with reading an online leaflet, you aren't going to engage with reading a physical copy either.

Gosh, people on Mumsnet are really harsh sometimes!
I think many people on here are forgetting about the inequalities in health care. So while yes, you can Google the information; there are many disadvantaged groups that may not have equal access (or the knowledge) to information. I'm not saying this requires an early booking appointment. I think I remember being given an information pack before seeing the midwife.

I completely see where you are coming from OP and I'm not sure why people are being so harsh!

As for your original question, I think during my last pregnancy 5 years ago I saw the midwife at around 8 weeks. Congratulations on your pregnancy.

How many of those disadvantaged women who wont/can't google anything will 1) know they're pregnant very early?
2) contact the gp/midwife promptly?
3) listen to the midwife when they wouldn't/couldn't listen to basic advice from other sources?
I imagine it's far more efficient to just provide additional care to those very few women who actually need it. I'm sure gps/social services will make sure vulnerable women are seen earlier.

I think you'd be surprised to be honest. Some people have very troubled lives. I see it a lot. Also, I wasn't saying that they should get an early booking appointment, I was just saying I could see the OP's point of view. There are many vulnerable people that would benefit from early intervention. Obviously in many cases this would not be recognised until that initial appointment and I completely appreciate resources don't allow it.

Lives specifically troubled so as to prevent them googling about folic acid, but not to buy and take an early pregnancy test and engage with health services? I don't buy that really.

8-10 weeks is usual. NHS website have all info on necessary actions in early pregnancy like diet and folic acid. And honestly, I had a booking appointment at 9 weeks and then had a miscarriage at 11 weeks. Having to get myself “out the system” was administratively awful. Thus pregnancy I didn’t self refer for ages because of that experience. Given how common miscarriage is, there’s no point having the r first appointment too early. Honestly don’t get yourself het up about it.

Yep! I've had 4 babies and always made an apt with the GP a within a couple
of weeks of finding out. The only exception being during covid when they spoke to me over the phone and referred me the maternity service.

Congratulations! It’s such a weird time in the early stage of pregnancy when nothing is showing and you haven’t even seen the midwife yet. Best wishes.

If you cba to do a quick Google about what to do when you're pregnant or read a book then you're probably not going to bother with supplements and nutrition just because a midwife told you to your face.

Just look at the numbers of women who continue to smoke through pregnancy- all the ones who try to hide it from the midwife. Everyone knows you shouldn't smoke, let alone smoke when pregnant.

OP - 10 weeks pregnant IS early. Some women don’t even find out they are pregnant until then.
The booking appointment is very boring and long - it is all just registering you on their systems and answering questions about your lifestyle and situation. If something happens to the baby there is absolutely nothing you or anyone else can do to stop it. What difference would an appointment earlier make, other than be a huge drain on resource and NHS time. If you are pregnant I’m sure you’d look to see what you should be doing and not doing. For most people your instinct to protect your baby kicks in and you want to do what’s best.
Im not sure what you want from this post? You seem to be arguing with everyone who says that a booking appointment between 10-12 weeks is fine - which from the vote is basically 100% of people. Are you expecting us to say no no, you must be right and the NHS and all their vast collective medical knowledge must be incorrect?

I’d also get used to not being seen much - after the 12 week appointment to the 20 week the wait is much worse honestly.

As someone who had a high risk pregnancy, seeing a midwife weekly, with the risk of immediate referral to prenatal unit and a lengthy in patient stay was an absolute ball ache.
I would have loved to have been a routine patient with just 4 appointments. Everytime I was seen by the consultant, midwife or admitted the potential that my baby was no longer living was awful.
Pregnancy, for most is a very natural process, it is not a disease.
The appointments are timed to coincide with key stages to catch known risks

In the US they pay for every check so it is fairly obvious why you see the ob/gym more frequently.

I had five miscarriages before I successfully carried my DS almost to term. My 2nd pregnancy ended in miscarriage and when the midwife phoned me to arrange the booking in app I was so distressed. I had phoned the GP surgery but the message had not reached the midwife.

You're completely missing the point.

No I'm not. I just don't agree with you. And evidently, neither does the NHS.

As someone who has had multiple losses I do think the reason they don’t usually see you until 8-10 weeks is because so many pregnancies do end in miscarriage before this time.

If you think 1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss, and the majority of losses are before 8 weeks. That’s a lot of unnecessary booking appointments to put it blunt.

There is never a safe zone, but statistically most pregnancies will be OK after 10 weeks.

It’s also why the NHS does not scan until 12 weeks. Not only can early scans be hard to tell how far you are, but they would be wasting millions, billions of pounds on scans if they scanned at say 6-7 weeks. I know it’s not nice to say but the chance of baby loss is so much higher in 1st tri than 2 and 3rd.