Declining antenatal care

[Casuallydresseddeepinconversation]

I've declined midwife appts,I had a call last week to try and change my mind and another today,I feel coerced and bullied,patronised and ignored,I'm 20 weeks today and just want to be left alone, considering not going to my 20 week scan now too, the 13 week one wasn't a pleasant experience either and I feel very anti NHS,tho I don't have funds for complete private care, just feeling very emotional atm

sorry to hear about that how awful. I agree care can be sub optimal but it is not always this way. Hearing a story like this is not very confidence inspiring and would make people wary I agree. But it wouldn’t put me off accessing medical care during pregnancy. Just because one person had this experience does not mean that all the nhs staff are useless and lacking in knowledge. There are hundreds of stories on this thread from women who have had issues picked up on and treated appropriately due to antenatal checks.

My grade IV placenta previa wasn't discovered until I had an additional scan at 35 weeks. I had no symptoms/bleeding at all. However, if I'd gone into labour naturally, the baby and I would have died. I had a caesarian at 37 weeks.

With my son you didn't have another scan after your 20 week scan unless something was picked up then, so you could have fully engaged with antenatal care and it still would have been missed

Isn't it great that antenatal care is now even better?

That's absolutely true.
When I had my children, there were no scans at all.
You only had them if there was a problem, such as bleeding.

No dating scans, no anomaly scans.

But we did get antenatal care, and things like pre-eclampsia and malpresentation were always picked up.

My grandmothers fully engaged in the antenatal care available to them - no scans at all so the OP would have been delighted. But both of my grandmothers would have slapped her upside the head and told her about the babies they lost.

What an awful thing to say, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Not even two hundred years ago did they go without a midwife.

No I don't think it is. Has she seen how many newborns are dying of whooping cough recently? I did notice it was "me, me,me" again though from OP.

I haven't RTFT so sorry of those has been covered already.

What does your DP think about you possibly refusing all further care?

So beige has mentioned already that you started a thread saying that they didn't want this baby.

Do they know that refusing Antenatal card is a safeguarding concern and an SW is likely to turn up soon?

Many people have pointed out that they had absolutely no signs of preeclampsia.

Do they know that they could potentially be a single parent looking after two grieving DC and possible a newborn?

My daughter was rushed to hospital with the RSV virus so yes I would judge if you wouldn't want to prevent that either.

They did. Poor women, especially. They couldn't afford medical care at all. Yes, an experienced neighbour would have helped.

Midwifery as a profession wasn't recognised till 1902.

You've heavily implied that the OP wants her inborn child to die, so yes, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Struggling to conceive and making different life choices does not give you the right to be heinous and abhorrent!

Well she doesn't seem to want to do anything to care for her unborn child so it's not a totally outrageous conclusion that perhaps she doesn't want the child.

Well she isn't exactly helping the chances of the baby is she? Refusing monitoring, refusing vaccines? Yeah I don't think it is wrong to suggest she doesn't have it's welfare in her mind.

I am sorry that happened to you,@Youthiswastedontheyoung . It is an assault. The pressure maternity services are under makes such events more likely, too, which is appalling.

@BecuaseIWantItThatWay what has struggling to conceive got to do with anything ? You are one to talk about nasty comments

Ask for a different midwife, clearly the one at your first appointment was rude or abrasive to you because I can't think of another reason to decline urine tests and blood pressure tests I mean it's for your benefit that you know you and the baby is ok.

Don't let one asshole put you off doing what you have to do phone up the maternity ward and ask for a different midwife

But you can't know, and it's been explained that placenta previa cannot be diagnosed at 12 weeks. That's why another scan is done at 20 weeks. And private scans are chancy. They are mostly feel-good, celebratory things and you may not be told clear results - there was a post earlier about this - because the people doing the scans are not necessarily medically proficient. The NHS is medically proficient even though underfunding has damaged it. Use the NHS, it's free at the point of access, after all.

Always?! Wow!

So... vaccines are out too?

Are you thinking of any form of private antenatal/perinatal/postnatal care?

Given your risk factors, I think it's important to reconsider remaining in contact with available services, for your child(ren) even if you're willing to take on the risks to yourself - they shouldn't have to bear the consequences if something goes wrong. You might not see yourself as high risk, but your case does have multiple risk factors in it just from what you've written on this site.

But you are massively increasing the risk when you remove all options there to help you and your baby. You mention your two DC alot, you are a single Mum right? So if anything goes wrong, the likelihood is that they are the ones that will be left to deal with it, not you as you'll be too busy giving birth/dying. Do you really want to subject your children to that? Finding you dead in the morning, watching you die, delivering a dead baby, delivering a baby that then dies in their arms and the guilt/trauma that may shape their lives. It is an awful thing to think of but giving birth is the most dangerous thing a woman can do so this is the harsh reality for many people that do not have access to medical care.

I'm a midwife. I can promise you plenty of women get diagnosed with a low lying placenta at the 20 week anomaly scan where there were no issues at the 12 week scan. Your placenta and uterus change an awful lot between 12 and 20 weeks. But if you're paying for a private scan then I'm sure they'll check that for you.