First midwife appointment - what should I expect?

[Ravgirl]

Sorry if this is a daft question but I'm 10 week pregnant with my first baby and have my 'checking in' appointment with the midwife at my GP practice on Thursday. The thing is what should I expect? I've had a look on NHS choices website and put in my postcode and it seems I have a choice of about 5 hospitals to have the baby in. Do I have to decide now? Will I have my scans at the hospital where I have the baby or can I change my mind nearer the time?

Any advice welcome

Don?t worry
First meetings for me (2 children) were all about paperwork and saying hello. No internal exams, no decisions to be made - just address, family medical history, weight, age, how you are feeling, blood pressure, possibly a wee sample etc. Nothing scary and nothing to decide right now. hth

Congratulations by the way!!

Second that - you don't need to decide where to have baby, or much else at this stage.

I would maybe get a wee sample ready but don't worry if you forget - I was always forgetting . If they really want a sample they will give you a pot to do it then!

I never had any internal exams for either baby?! Literature says you might, so I always wore my nice pants but they never looked!

Good luck and congrats!!!

yep - congratulations!!

as LT says - its purely paperwork and 'getting to know you' (if thats relevant - when I was in London I saw umpteen midwifes at St Marys - then moved to the 'sticks' and theres just the one community mw that comes to you at home for the first appointment)

I seem to recall when I was in London, I was asked about my choice of hospitals when I registered with the GP - that was before I even saw a midwife (I had to chooose the hospital first and saw a midwife there) I couldnt decide on the spot, because I had no idea, but was asked to ring them asap before they could arrange a mw appointment.

It might be a good idea just to do some research on the hospitals now, to rule any out, or get some ideas - post them up here and wait for the comments!!

I'm not sure that you can simply 'change your mind' once you've selected a hospital, but I'm sure there are ways and means - it very much depends on where you are because everywhere does it differently (some places don't offer you a 20wk anomaly scan I believe)

to be asked if you and your OH are blood relatives or was that just us?

I had my first midwife appt on Monday. I didn't get asked if I was related to the father! (Don't know how I would have reacted to that one!)

I got given a sample jar for my wee and just went to the loo at the end of the appt (better than showing up with the traditional pickle jar full of it!)

Also got blood taken for various STD checks and to check my blood group.

It was very un-scary. I did get asked where I wanted to have teh baby but she said it could be changed later.

Ravgirl - one thing I did that I think was worthwhile was made a wee list of questions to ask the m/w. Might be worth thinking of that kind of thing beforehand so you're not kicking yourself as soon as you leave...

Dear All,

Many thanks for the replies and sorry for not posting sooner (pretty crazy time at work!).

The appointment went ok but I didn't really like my midwife very much, she is retiring in August (thank god!) and is very 'old school', she started the appointment by saying 'so where are we having this baby then?' and said I had to choose a hospital at my first appointment as they all use different notes and before she could fill any of them in she needed to know which hospital, I was a bit overwhelmed so chose Leicester in the end as it's the closest.

Also every time I asked a question she just said 'I'll get to that in a minute' but never did! All in all a pretty miserable experience to be honest. Anyway they have another midwife in my GP practice who will probably look after me as she is retiring so hopefully she will be a bit nicer.

I had my first midwife appt on friday for DC2 and the first thing asked was what hospital did I want bubs at, choice of 2. Thinking about it though, when I was pregnant with Tom (and living in England) I didn't get a choice, lol.

Out of the 2 choices, I picked the one we know how to get to!

What is different here in Scotland is that ante natel appts are held at the local hospital and the midwife from the hospital of my choice comes down to the local one for my appts. Really odd, as midwife just went to GP practice last time.

I'm not allowed to have DC2 at the local hospital due to complications I had with Tom, which I knew before the appt.