12 weeks!

Morning sickness has mostly subsided now, and I'm so much less fatigued. I had my second doctor's appointment yesterday, but with a different doctor's office, as neither Felipe nor I had been very satisfied with the care provided by Dr. Meda at Samaritan Women's Care. During our first visit, she was dismissive of questions, brief, and not thorough at all. I contacted Women's Care in Mansfield and set up an appointment to pick up where we'd left off with Samaritan, and wow, I was impressed. The first step was to talk with the person who handles insurance, and she carefully went over all of the costs and their processes, making sure I knew everything there possibly was to know and seeing if I had any questions. After getting blood drawn by the nicest nurse who didn't leave the tourniquet on my arm for several hours, I was allowed to remove my coat and boots when getting weighed at this appointment, bringing my weight down to 133 from the whopping 145 it had been at my previous appointment. The nurse at Samaritan was in a rush and told me to leave my boots on when I attempted to do otherwise, because it "didn't make that much of a difference, anyway." Accuracy is not their fine point, I guess.

The appointment ended with a 30-45 minute conversation with a nurse about each of the appointments I will have between now and birth, what tests are optional and which are necessary, and some description of the birthing process at MedCentral. One of the reasons I had felt so strongly about switching doctors was a phone call with Dr. Meda's office in which I requested to opt out of the pap test and was told, "you have to have it." When I asked exactly what that meant, I was transferred to a nurse who advised, "Good luck finding someone who won't make you get the test." I cancelled my next Samaritan appointment and decided that even if I was required to have the test, I'd rather have it in an environment where I felt comfortable and respected. Funnily, I hadn't even told this nurse about that issue, and she looked at the paperwork, remarked, "Oh, you're only 20, we don't do pap tests on anyone under 21," and crossed it off the list. When I got home, I Googled "pap test under 21" and found an enormous number of articles on major news sites saying studies have indicated that it is unnecessary and even unwise to test on women before they're 21. In addition, an ABC news article stated, "But they’ve  found that testing every three years prevented just as many cervical cancer deaths as testing every year. But  the annual testing brought on false-positives, unnecessary biopsies, which bring a risk of infection, pregnancy complications and infertility, and, of course, unnecessary stress." I had my last test about a year and a half ago.

I think my husband is getting hungry, so I'd better go help with that, and I promised a trip to the library today :) Hopefully I'll get better at updating regularly.