I'm 8 weeks pregnant and have just had some brown spotting. My history is that I've had two successful pregnancies, 2 mmc at 11 weeks (in both cases the baby stopped developing at about 6 weeks) and 2 early miscarriages. I rang the GP today about the spotting and asked to be referred to the EPU for a scan. He was lovely and said he'd do this, no problem at all. I rang the surgery at about 9.30, and got a call back from the GP at around 11. I then hung around all day wondering if the EPU would get back to me which they finally did at 4pm and offered me a scan for tomorrow.
So far, so good. My issue is that I work as a childminder and I feel extremely uncomfortable with the idea of cancelling work as it has a knock-on impact on lots of other people. Because of this, I asked if I could fix the scan for a time when I wouldn't end up having to mess people around (early next week, when I won't have any extra children to look after). I was told this was completely impossible, that they operate an emergency service and that if I refused to accept the appointment that they offered me, I would have to be re-referred in order to be seen (and go through the whole rigmarole of waiting by the phone for the GP and EPU to call me back all over again, which seems like a ridiculous waste of lots of people's time).
So, AIBU? The thing is, this self-evidently isn't an emergency. If I'm miscarrying again, there's nothing they'll be able to do about it, it's just that it'd be nice to know before the 12 week scan, or before I start haemorrhaging like I did last time round. So I really don't want to mess my parents (mindees' parents, I mean) around by cancelling their childcare at the last minute. The EPU's claim to be offering an emergency service seemed to be a bit dodgy anyway, given that they got my referral at lunchtime and didn't ring me til 4, which implies that they didn't think it was much of an emergency either. The annoying thing is that I would have been free to see them any time today if I hadn't had to spend all day waiting for people to ring me back.
What I'm upset about is the way in which I felt the woman on the phone treated me as if I was asking for something completely unreasonable in wanting to be seen at a time that was convenient to me, given my work. Now I'm left in limbo, not sure what's going on with this pregnancy and not sure how to go about getting a scan appointment for a time that won't mess other people around.
So - any advice? What would you do in my situation? My vague plan at the moment is just to wait and see and probably just end up miscarrying at home (assuming that's what's happening again - I realise that brown spotting isn't necessarily the end of the world, but that's the way my other mcs have started), and not bother with the hospital again unless I have another haemorrhage. But I do feel really upset after my conversation with the EPU woman this afternoon (hence the long post - I needed to get things off my chest!)