doglet the bump is now the size of a pomegranate:
we had our 16 week appointment last week and everything looked good, although they didn't do much. we talked about my puff face for a while, but all tests were negative for covid, strep, and other pathogens, so it will forever be a mystery what was wrong with me. the puff is gone now. they also used a doppler heart monitor to hear the heartbeat which is what I mainly wanted to do during this appointment. There was a med student in the room shadowing the OBGYN and she applied the doppler, so I knew I would need to wait for a bit while she found the right spot to hear the heart beat, but it was still unpleasant waiting so long to hear that thump. I also did my second trimester bloodwork, which all came back normal. I clocked in at 125 lbs.
We saw an OB this week instead of the midwife so we could compare and contrast. You can do a natural birth with an OB, so we figured we would talk to them and see if anything came up that would sway us one way or the other.
The OB and midwives are interchangeable to a certain extent. If there are a lot of midwife deliveries one day and not many OB deliveries, the OB may be the one to do the delivery for a midwife patient, and vice versa. The birth rooms are exactly the same (this is not what I imagined, I imagined that the midwife patients would all be out in a big open space in something that resembled the large floor of an open physical therapy practice with exercise balls, ballet bars, and other apparati strewn everywhere. Then at least you could be kind of entertained during labor). All rooms have tubs but the midwives have more training on using them during birth, and the OBs don't use them as much. Because everyone is in the same space, if I were to end up needed a C section, or changed my mind and wanted to do an epidural, I wouldn't have to move at all, the OB would be right there to step in (in my worst case scenario I imagined that you might have to walk down the hall or something 😂).
One difference is that during pregnancy, you will be assigned to one OB and with the midwife track you will see all 9 of the midwives. I'm not sure which is better. The reason you don't get assigned to one midwife is because it could be any of them assigned to you on your actual delivery day. The OB stated that even though we would be seeing her throughout the entire pregnancy, it would be unlikely that she would be the one doing the actual delivery. So continuity of care with one person seems nice, but then you might get so used to that one person, having someone else actually do the delivery might be weird. Scales are even there.
Another difference that the OB stated is that they tend to spend less time with patients during the delivery. This makes sense, since a midwife patient is typically going to need more hands on assistance getting into different positions, and there are less midwife patients. I also felt like the OB was more rushed than the midwife in the actual appointment, which I don't know if it was just that particular person on that particular day, but I think part of it may be that the midwife is supposed to provide more 'holistic care', while the OB said they are more focused strictly on the medical side of birth and don't get into nutrition and things like that as much. Regardless, I didn't really like that.
So I think for the kind of birth and pregnancy I'm striving for it makes more sense to go with the midwife, and is great to have the best of both worlds with the OBs close at hand. I really liked the first midwife we saw, I felt like she gave us a lot of space and time to talk, ask questions, and she talked a lot too without our prompting. She also was the one who helped talk me through what I needed to do about puff face over the weekend. Next appointment is at 20 weeks and will be with a different midwife- hoping for a similar experience so I can continue to feel confident.
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