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?

🤣 you've literally just taken what I've said and made things up. I explicitly said that I wasn't expecting people to have earlier booking in appointments.
I merely said that some people would benefit from it.

Wow if you are shocked by this, wait til you leave the hospital with an actual real life baby and nobody tells you what to do!

The NHS can’t do everything and basically you are very much on your own. This is why there are huge differences in outcomes in both health and educationally for children that are born into poverty. If you know you need to take folic acid, then take it. Nobody is going to come knocking on your door to tell you to take it.

Therefore, I just assumed they’d offer an initial appointment earlier for those who might need more support.

The thing is, those who really need the information and support and won't look things up online, don't self refer early. They often present late to care and we are often just trying to encourage them to come to appointments at all! So it's pointless offering an early antenatal for everyone so we can say "take folic acid".

My DH is a consultant in the NHS so I’m very familiar with how it works - no need to patronise me.

Of course, when you get home with a baby you absolutely do have access to health care and advice - you have visits from a midwife and a health visitor. My expectation was that access to healthcare would start earlier in pregnancy, as I believe it should and as it used to in the NHS.

There’s a difference between something being different to your expectation and being shocked. I wasn’t shocked.

Confused as to why if you're so familiar with how it all works you've made this thread in the first place? You may have worked in health and social care as does your husband but you're being very stubborn towards people giving you answers who have more experience in this than you 😂.

Anyone who's experienced issues in early pregnancy will tell you that the NHS doesn't really care, it doesn't have the resources to care and actually there's very little you can do if someone goes wrong early on. This absolutely influences the booking appointment date as there's a hell of a lot of data collection and blood tests etc which happen at that apt .. Doesn't really matter what the NHS website says.

Op you’ve had lots and lots of reassurance that this is the standard timescale for nhs appointments but you seem to be determined that it should be earlier - have you considered private maternity care as this may be different?
my first of three pregnancies was 30 odd yrs ago and home tests were a week after a missed period and the gp surgery wouldn’t accept them other than to send off their own urine test which took a couple of weeks to get a result, then an appt with the midwife was about 3 weeks later so still around 8-10 weeks

My booking appointment was also my first scan.

I filled in the form on the website at around 5 weeks (when I found out I was pregnant) and was sent a letter to attend the hospital at 10 weeks.

I got asked a million questions and scanned there and then.

This happened with both of my pregnancies - 7 years apart - however, I am in NI.

That’s incorrect. Sadly, many babies are lost before eight weeks. That’s why the booking in appointment isn’t held until that point.