Doctor's visit

Everything went really well this morning with my second appointment (first at this office, Life Cycle Ob-Gyn in East Point). It's a nice new office, they were efficient and friendly, and it took as long to do a full exam and blood work here as it had to get the results of the pregnancy test at Morrow Family Medicine. So big improvement there. The pediatrics are next door in the same building but it's totally separate, so while that will be convenient later on, I won't get bumped by a baby with the flu, and won't have to listen to any screaming while I'm waiting! (No sense in dealing with that before I absolutely have to.) The nurse-midwives do everything at this office unless there are complications, and you meet the doctor just once. You don't get the same midwife each time on purpose so that you can meet all of them and be comfortable with whoever ends up being there for the delivery. Shannon took care of me this morning, and Jordan and I both really liked her. She's very talkative which kept me from getting nervous but she also made sure all my questions were answered. They deliver at South Fulton Medical Center and I asked her what she thought about it. She sort of laughed knowing full well the conclusion people jump to on its reputation just because of this area of town. She said that everyone there is really nice and perfectly competent, and that just like any other hospital, you'll have to ask for what you want (for example, freedom to move around during labor), otherwise they'll keep you on the monitor the whole time and stuff like that. But I was very pleased with what she said about this practice – that they rarely even talk about inductions unless moms are well past their due date. In other words, they don't schedule you to be induced just for the sake of convenience. If one midwife is on vacation, there's always another one there and I'm assuming the doctors are not always at the births unless it's an emergency, although I forgot to ask. They have a low c-section rate and it's never something that's done so the doctor can just go home and have a nice weekend. So it turns out this is exactly the type of practice I was looking for and it's so convenient to work and home. So Baby Bennett and I are very happy today! Our first ultrasound is next Wednesday, so we'll keep you posted. They did not listen to the heart rate today. I wasn't expecting to since she didn't mention that on the phone as standard procedure at the 2nd visit, even though they would mostly likely be able to detect fetal heart sounds at this stage. It's amazing that something the size of a grape already has a beating heart!