Baby News

I had another doctor's appointment yesterday. This time I made the appointment with Dr. Halcomb. There are four lady doctors in the practice, and whichever one happens to be on call when I go into labor, will be the one delivering the baby. So I figured I might as well start getting to know the other doctors.

I like her, but I like Dr. Deppen a whole lot better. She is okay though. It probably was not the best day to meet her for the first time because the other doctors are on vacation right now and she had a delivery that morning before she could come into the office. So I imagine she was tired. But still, she was nice.

I had to wait on her to get there for a little bit while back in the examination room so I took my chart off of the front of the door and read it while waiting. I felt like such a rebellious little patient, though it is MY chart. :-) I was looking at the reports from the ultrasounds. The big one with the guy in downtown Nashville said that my amniotic fluid level was 8.1 cm, and LOW. The follow up one at the office in Hermitage said that it was 8.5 and NORMAL.

So when the doctor got there, I asked her for a second opinion on doing another ultrasound. She said that they wouldn't want to do it if it wasn't important, and that they really need to know if it is still low and not getting lower. I said, even though it had increased between the last two ultrasounds? She said yes, because it was only 8.5 cm. I asked what normal was, and she said at that point, It should be 15-16 cm, which backs up what the freaking out ultrasound dude said. Dr. Deppen said it was just the low side of normal.

So when I got home, I did my own research. EVERYTHING I've read says that anything above 7 cm is NORMAL. Anything below 5 cm is LOW. Point for Dr. Deppen. There was an article put out by John Hopkins that said that lower amniotic fluid levels is not really as big a deal as they thought, as long as everything else is normal.

However, the norm with low amniotic fluid is that there tends to be more cesareans, just because of the stigma associated with it. So, my conclusion is that if I refuse to do another ultrasound, I may find myself in the hospital with a doctor that says I have to do a cesarean because they don't know what the fluid is doing because I refused the ultrasound. I'd rather have the ultrasound than to deal with that, and I think the ultrasound poses a lesser risk than anything else I may have to deal with if I refuse. Gotta pick my battles carefully.

I had my glucose test yesterday too, and I got a call from Nurse Jamie this morning. They said no news was good news. Uh oh. I failed. My glucose level was 205. She said it should around 135. She said that anytime it's over 200 they automatically assume you have gestational diabetes and treat you accordingly. I'll be going Monday morning for a 2 hr class and getting a machine to check my blood sugar every day (hopefully just once a day but they will probably tell me 3 times a day. Grr.). I KNOW I've been eating more sugar lately. I was doing SO well until Wal-Mart came out with candy corn... and it's been downhill from there. So I asked if my recent eating habits could throw off the test, and she said, yes it most certainly could. So watching my diet along with testing my blood sugar will give them a more accurate picture of what it really going on, but at this point it is so high that they need to act accordingly just in case. Which makes sense.

Just what I've always wanted to do, stick myself every day... Oh well. :-)