I had my booking appointment with my midwife on Friday and it went a little bit different to my expectations. This is my first pregnancy and as I don't have any other experience to compare it to, I thought maybe sharing it here will help me understand if my concerns are valid or if I am overthinking it.
The main source of my disappointment was the midwife and how uninterested she seemed to be in everything I had to say. She didn't explain much and most of my questions remained unanswered. Most of these were things my GP/pharmacist had told me I can discuss with my midwife.
When it came to filling the forms, she shared her computer screen with me and asked me to read the questions myself and give her the answers. It didn't bother me as I thought this would be faster but the main problem was that when I was giving her my answers, she would repeatedly mark the wrong box or type the wrong information and I had to correct her. At this point deep down I was very glad that she had shared her screen with me otherwise, I don't know what was going into the form. Also, there were questions that we didn't discuss but later on I noticed that she had marked them on the form (for instance, she never asked about my feelings about the baby or whether the pregnancy was planned but I noticed that she had already marked the answers to these). We kept jumping back and forth between the forms, mainly because her mouse would just click the wrong place and then it was difficult for her to get us back to where we were.
When it came to discussing my medical history, I told her about the previous surgeries on my uterus to remove the fibroids, she didn't seem to know much about them and even kept using the wrong name for the surgery I had. I was trying to explain to her how my surgery was different from what she was writing in my notes but in the end I gave up and thought I will discuss it with the consultant.
Almost 20 minutes after I had left her office and I was waiting for my DH to come and pick me up, she stormed into the waiting room and told me to go back to her office because she had forgotten to take my blood pressure!
So overall, the whole appointment was very hectic and all over the place. I felt I didn't gain anything out of it and my whole trust in the midwife is now shattered as I can't stop thinking that somewhere further along the line, she might forget something or make a mistake in her reporting or give me inadequate advice.
My care will be consultant-led because of my medical history but I still believe the midwife will be key. I asked this lady if I will always see her in my appointments and she said that it will be either her or another midwife because she is retired and only works two days a week.
So, what would you do if you were in my place? Is there any point in trying to switch to another midwife? If so, how can I go about doing this? (This is a university hospital in London)
The other disappointment I had was because the hospital couldn't give me an appointment with the consultant in the timeframe that the midwife had said. She wanted me to meet with the consultant in 4 weeks but the earliest the receptionist could give me an appointment was 8 weeks. Is this normal? What will happen further along the line if I need to see the consultant in a certain timeframe? Can they just push me back because they don't have any available appointments when most things in pregnancy are time-sensitive?