Take your pee home with you, please

[OhBuggerandArse]

Have just had a midwife's appointment and she asked me to take my sample home with me to throw away as they're not allowed to do it themselves any more (because of Health and Safety? or something - I was too amazed to listen properly so I'm not quite sure what the reasoning was).

Has this happened to anyone else? Doesn''t it seem a bit mad? Won't everybody just drop their little bottles into the nearest public bin on the way out of the doctors, which you would think would be even more of a risk than keeping them all in the hazardous waste bin?

Mine empties it down the sink and gives the pot back. Always worried that there will be a bit left that will somehow affect the test the next time It goes to the same place as when you flush the toilet so I don't see why they wouldn't be allowed!

Yeap same here same pot whole pregnancy was different last pregnancy I take it a resealable sarnie bag so it should it leak it will be safe in handbag! freaked me out a bit as well last pregnancy different pot each time!

Maybe I'm being overly precious about this, but I think if I turn up to a medical appointment and have brought a sample of bodily fluid/any bodily substance with me to be tested I really don't think I should be given the sample back to dispose of and be expected to clean the container and re-use it. In every other healthcare situation I've been in (and unfortunately I've clocked up quite a few in my time) pots for urine samples, or any other kind of sample(!), have been strictly one-use only and the healthcare professional doing the testing has disposed of both contents and container. So why is it that when it comes to ante-natal care it's suddenly different?
Question to those of you who are expected to take home and re-use - if you produce an abnormal sample that shows up something dodgy, are you still expected to re-use the container? If you produce an abnormal sample surely there's the chance of cross-contamination for future samples? And how do they know that each patient will wash out the pot adequately?

i always have to take it home with me. im sorry, if they want me to bring a urine sample, they could at least not give it back to me!

During both my pg I have had the bottle to re-use adn been given it back after mw dips it.
Don't see the problem tbh. It's your own wee after all.

My MW with first baby wouldn't even give me a sample pot. 'Just put it in a mustard pot, make sure you wash it out well'

and btw if there is anything found, it is confirmed by a sterile lab-tested sample anyway.

Mustard pot!! Mad!!! I was investigated for long history of persistent urinary tract infections a number of years ago. I had to produce an awful lot of urine samples - and they were so particular about using a fresh container each time and, for example, not weeing in a plastic cup and then pouring it in the sample pot - they said collecting in any other way could compromise the results. So how can it be different for ant-natal wee? What if you wash your pot out with detergent or bleach, but leave a trace in after rinsing and this changes the PH or whatever of your urine and you get a false result? The sample pots I get given have a label stuck to the side. Inevitably some wee ends up on the label and soaking in to a degree - rinsing is not going to get rid of that. Repeated reusing would make it really disgusting!

well - I am glad to hear you are still using pots. We get given the stick in the clinic and have to go to the toilet and pee on it there and then. Beat that girls!

Well, in other health settings you may be ill, and there may be the risk of infection, I guess, whereas pregnant women aren't ill. Can't bring myself to get worked up about it. Tiny traces aren't going to change pH, etc, and I guess the risk of affecting what they test for in pregnancy is sufficiently small to allow for reuse.

If you need to produce a sample to go to the lab you would have a fresh sterile pot and the wee would be sent away.

For the dipstick test in the surgery there is no need for it to be sterile so you can reuse the pot, and it shouldn't be poured down the sink for infection control reasons.

My surgery spends so much money on sample pots and we are encouraged to limit their issue as much as possible. We have nearly 10,000 patients!

It's your wee, why is it so gross for you to dispose of it?

I once had to do approx 150 wee samples over the course of a year, I was sent a small glass testtube for the sample, but was told by the nurse to use a jug, and then transfer the wee to the tube, and just sloosh the jug out with boiling water in between samples.

The jug became an attractive feature of our bathroom!

I must admit I was surprised when my mw here made a [yuk] face when I suggested I use the same tube for all my samples.

And where is your jug now, hazey? Didn't you once carry a carton of piss all over London?

cardamom what do you do with your body fluids at home? do you have an incinerator? or a landfil site out the back?

Yes, thats right Habbibu, it was like a 4 pint milk carton - aah, happy days

An even happier day was when I threw my 'pisjoeg' away!

I always have to take mine away again- last time I went straight to work and forgot about it and found it in my handbag 3 days later!

I blame the baby brain...

When I had a hospital appointment, I couldn't find a pot to put the wee in, so I used one of those glass pickled onion jars. It made the midwife laugh (and I still had to take it home with me)

Gross and ridicolous but i would just nip into hospital/clinic loo and dispose of it there.

I have been asked similar in GP's surgery with DS's nappy when it was dirty at 6 week check.

I think it is pretty disgusting that they pour the urine down the sink, I wouldn't do that would anyone else?

I was surprised when my MW gave me mine back. I have also forgot about it to open my bag up in a shop with full tube in sight .

Mine always poured it down the sink, rinsed the pot, gave it back to me. (And urine isn't sterile once it is out of your body, only sterile when it is in there!). Would've been equally happy though to dispose of it myself. After all - getting rid of it is a damn sight easier than getting it in there in the first place

Mine pours it down the sink and then bins the the sample tube..

Yes happens at our GP/MW too. When PG I had to take the sample home to dispose of it & had to use the same pot every time. In fact the first time I went I had to ask for a pot as they said to just bring a sample in an old clean jam jar!!! NHS cutbacks?!

Those little pots can cost up to 10p each - which actually amounts to a shed load of dosh NHS wde.

Can't be bothered to do the maths though!

Wee shouldn't be put down the hand wash sinks though, it should go down the loo or sluice room drain.

It depended what midwife I got, one chucked it away and gave me a clean tube, the other gave me it back but also gave me a clean sample tube too .

I used to take my tube in a plastic sandwich bag as I was paranoid about leaks!