Antenatal appointments HELP!

[SiberianHuskyMom1]

Hi Mumsnet.

Please dont judge me, this is gonna be a long confusing one but i really need some help.

I found out i was pregnant in Feb and was unsure what i wanted to do. I spoke to doctors about a termination but decided not to go through with it as i couldnt do it and it didnt feel right. I already have a little girl who is 18months old and i had sooo many problems with my midwives when i was pregnant. They caused me hell and i didnt enjoy my pregnancy one bit. I havent booked in for any antenatal appointments yet and i know i need to but im suffering severe anxiety not knowing how to explain my situation to the midwives without them causing me any problems. I dont want home visits off them as all they do is nit pick about everything.

How do i go about calling them and explaining my situation without them thinking bad of me. Im scared they will cause me problems for not contacting them and me previously wanting a termination but changing my mind.

Please help im so emotional right now all im doing is crying as i just dont know what to say to them without being judged.

TIA

You know you and your baby need antenatal care. You can take a relative or friend with you to your appointments for support.

Has anyone else raised concerns eg HV?

Well I doubt you will be the 1st patient they have had who has changed their mind about termination so I wouldn't worry about that.

What exactly were the problems you had last time? Was is one specific midwife?

Just call them up and tell them that the midwives did not listen to you and made you feel extremely uncomfortable when you were pregnant with your daughter, so you were too anxious to contact them until someone made you decide you had to. (I just put that as a politer way of saying they were fucking horrid.)

Do you have anyone who can chaperone you to appointments? The midwife I met at my booking appointment was horrible so now I'm chaperoned to the majority of my antenatal appointments and purposely go to different clinics.

I don't mean to be rude, but was the "nit picking" in your last pregnancy in regards to past events or mental health problems? You sound very anxious and upset on your post and sound like you may need some support in relation to your mental health, was this something raised before?

In regards to the question asked, I would just call and make your antenatal appointment, if asked just explain politely. Midwifes will have seen plenty of women who had previous terminations or considered it in pregnancy, my 1st child I was very young and like you I had a doctors app discussing termination but changed my mind. As far as I am aware this information wasn't passed on to the midwife, or if it had she never mentioned it!

Just re read your post, do you mean to say you are 4-5 months pregnant but haven't had any scans/appointments so far? Or is it just the midwife you haven't yet seen?

I have always said since having my baby who is now 6 months I would really consider not going to antenatal appointments with our next one not at least until I was 20+ weeks. I had horrible experiences with my midwives. I reported one late on in pregnancy and even right up until I gave birth (on my living room floor alone) I didn't like any of them! They caused me more stress and I felt judged all the time. X

i completely understand both me and babh need antenatal care however i just dont feel like midwives helped me the first time. I dont have mental health problems im just a very anxious person and feel like people like midwives will judge me for my decsion to call now.
My last midwife was awful, telling me my house was untidy when i hadnt long moved into a new build.She forced me to book for a induction even though my daughter was born naturally the day before i was due to be induced.
My friend has said she will be with me at all appointments but everytime i think about calling them i panic about what they are going to say to me, and im scared they will try and get SS involved as i havent booked until now.

Im just so emotional because of my last pregnancy i dont know what to do, i feel my baby moving and everything im just so anxious.

Thanks everyone for the advice im going to try and call them later with my friend here

Yes im about 5 months pregnant and havent been to appointments yet x

The induction was it cause you were over your due date? Or for another medical reason? Just trying to understand what the issue was with booking it. Obviously the tidy house bit is none of her business unless their is a risk to a child. Could you ring up and request that you definitely see a different midwife to the one you saw last time.
I know you say you have no mental health problems but you do sound overly anxious which might be something to think about.

OP can you try calling with someone else present that knows your history? That way if you cannot cope you can hand the phone over to them?

Also if your friend or someone is at every appointment they will realise you have support and so won't need to involve SS.

Btw I understand that some HCPs are just horrible and judgemental if they think you fit into a certain stereotypical group. I also know that until other people as individuals have had a HCP treat them like that they don't understand why people detest particularly HCPs.

I can't imagine that they would even know about your conversation re termination with the doctor. You can request a specific midwife, if you can remember the names of any you particularly didn't get on with you could request not them - just say you didn't particularly get on with them when they looked after you previously.

About last time - why did they want to book an induction? It's standard to book an induction for a couple of weeks post due date, and many women will give birth before they get to their induction date (I did).

You could request to have midwife visits in clinic rather than in your home if that would make you feel more in control/less on show. And yes, take someone with you who can listen to what is said, help you ask for what you need, and help you to remember accurately what was said afterwards.

SS aren't the big evil, a lot of what they do is supporting people who need a bit of extra help. At any rate, I doubt they would call them for this, and you will not be the first person to ring up mid way through pregnancy (some people don't find out they are pregnant until late on). The chances are, you will find that they just book you in for an appointment with the midwife and a scan asap.

Please please ring them, this baby is coming, and better for you (and baby) to have proper care before then than for you to show up at the hospital in labour with no recorded history/checks, and the midwives unsure of your risk level, health, or what support you need.

Just about your comment re feeling that the midwives didn't help last time - many women would probably be fine without the checks. A healthy baby, a healthy pregnancy, and the baby would be born and everyone ok. When the midwives help is when things don't go to plan - they monitor your blood pressure, urine, iron levels, mental health, growth of the baby etc. While everything is fine it may feel like the appointments aren't worth anything, but if they find something amiss and can do something about it, then the appointments suddenly become a whole lot more important, but there is no way of knowing who will develop issues as their pregnancy progresses.

Just remember you are in charge. With my first pregnancy they tried telling me they’d only let me go 12 days over. No... I decided if/when they’d induce. I agreed to any monitoring needed.. but why would I force my baby out if they simply weren’t ready yet?
With my second pregnancy I wouldn’t have any needles (phobia), they had all my notes from my previous pregnancy and my circumstances were the same, so I didn’t see why they needed all the routine stuff again. It wasn’t really needed. Same as the injection they give to speed the afterbirth up... wasn’t happening!