So, my EX-doctor thinks I'm crazy.....

Yeah, I'm switching OB's.....I'm 33 weeks and heading to another practice. *sigh* Well, I saw it coming, husband saw it coming, shoot, EVERYONE saw it coming, I just have to be hit with a mack truck it seems to get the hints of my life. Oh, and just to clarify, I'm not going to another OB, I'm going to a midwife now....but I'll get into that later.

So I had my bi-weekly check up with Dr. Evil on Monday. Well, the previous evening I had felt like Rollie Pollie wasn't moving as much....or the same as before. I got a little paranoid. You should know, that Isabella quit moving altogether around 35 weeks, to the point where I really thought she had died in utero, but was assured with Non-Stress Tests that she was P-E-R-F-E-C-T-L-Y Fine. Right. Oooookay. So I continue to get more worked up over night and in the morning while getting ready for said appointment. I call husband. I cry, I panic a little. Husband does what husband does best and talks me off the ledge. Says reassuring things like "Rollie Pollie is fine, maybe he's just tired." "Or fat" We laugh. I'm feeling better......a little better anyways. He decides he needs to leave work and come with me. I protest, he insists.....gosh I love that man. So we're off to see Dr. Evil.

We get to Dr. Evil's office and I inform her nurse that we are concerned, I have what I consider decreased fetal movement, movements have changed, etc. Nurse checks heart rate with crappy doppler, says "his heart is good, everything is fine". Thanks LPN! You must know everything! I wanted to slap her and say, "yeah, I have one of those at home and my daughter's heart was always beating but SHE WAS NOT FINE!". But I don't, because she doesn't really know what she's talking about and I know this. Dr. Evil comes in, all hurried and busy like. (Us little people just have no idea how *hard* their jobs are.....my goodness!) Says "you look great, baby looks great, he's moving great, right?" Um, NOPE. Guess you and your super LPN don't converse. I give complaints, she acts annoyed. (once again, her job is *very* hard you know.....and it's completely my fault she CHOSE to be a doctor.......funny how most doctors seem to really hate patients, hm. I'm not sure how they think they are supposed to earn those porsche's?, but I digress) So Dr. Evil sighs heavily and says "well, we'll give you non-stress test" Like she's the one giving it or something. Right. Anyways, we do it for a whopping 20 minutes, she says "well, he kicked 5 times (didn't pay any attention to the accelerations, there were none) we'll see you in two weeks". Fine. Whatever. You're a doctor, so you're a god, I'm stooooopid since I'm not a doctor.

We leave. We eat lunch, I drink some caffeine to see if that will wake our lazy Rollie Pollie up. Yep, it does. Ah.....I feel much better. For a while. Then it continues. Very little movements. More squirms, less kicks. I'm getting really worked up again. I keep having deja vu from Isabella. Fearing the worse is happening again. I drive myself crazy for another 24 hours, break down crying several times, decide to call Dr. Evil's "nurse". Instead of a nurse with instructions I get Dr. Evil herself. How nice. NOT. She immediately says "what EXACTLY can I do for you CRAZY LADY (ok, she calls me by my name, but it was insinuated)" (emphasis on extrememly hateful tone) I stutter for a minute because one I'm surprised a doctor god called a little person like me on the phone and two she's being so incredibly nasty and I'm not sure why. I say something like "uh, I'm not sure, I'm just worried and I just want some reassurance that baby is fine." She says: "well, I gave you a NST, is that not enough???" Well, no, actually it's not dammit! I had several of those with Isabella, was reassured she was fine and she was in fact not fine....but she knows that. She knows all of that. I tell her she is being awfully insensitive to my situation, given what I went through with Isabella AND THEN BURYING HER THREE MONTHS AGO. You know what that EVIL woman says to me? "Well, you knew this pregnancy would be hard." Yeah, I did.....to an extent. Did I KNOW my daughter would die when I was 18 weeks pregnant? Nope. Does that complicate things? Just a little. Are my emotions crazy right now? Completely. Is it justified? Totally. I don't owe ANYONE an explanation. Period. Not even a "god doctor". So then she asks if I just want her to take the baby NOW so I can see him. Oh, yes please. I'd love a preemie! Oh yeah! There's the right answer you sarcastic terrible witch woman. So now I'm full on bawling, ashamed at my emotions because the normal me would have ripped her a new one and left HER crying in the fetal position, but I just don't have any fight in me these days.
So Dr. Evil sighs again (I'm really getting tired of those exaggerated sighs at this point, like I'm some insolent three year old) and says "just go to Labor and Delivery tonight and I'll set you up with a Biophysical Profile, will that make you feel better???" I said "hopefully, yes". Another sigh. "let's just have you do TWO of those a week, so you won't bother me". Bother you? BOTHER YOU???? I AM PAYING YOU! I EMPLOY YOU! THAT ESCALADE YOU DRIVE? THAT'S ME YOU BLEEPITY, BLEEPING, BLEEP. Oh, but once again, I digress.

So husband and I go to have the BPP and everything is fine. Rollie Pollie scores an 8 out of 8, which is perfect. I feel better. Husband wants to beat Dr. Evil within an inch of her life, which is so sweet of him. ;) We talk to the nurse........we tell nurse that we are leaving Dr. Evil immediately. We tell her why. She tells us Dr. Evil is not liked.....by anyone. Oh and she has the highest C-Section rate of ALL OB's at this hospital. Let me tell you, she has a lot of OB's to compete with. Not good. It doesn't really surprise us, since Dr. Evil has been trying to schedule my baby since I was 15 weeks (for convenience of course, I just haven't figured out if it's for mine or hers???) I know it angers her that I wouldn't let her induce me. Well, get over it. I'm an intelligent woman, I do my homework and really, it's my body.....don't I get a say?

Why is it that Doctors don't like educated patients? I asked one of my friends who is an RN that question today, she also use to work for an OB (one that I like and respect by the way and has done a lot for us this pregnancy, he just can't deliver this baby because he's a man, and I have issues with that.) Well she said patients like me make doctors feel "threatened". If you're a good doctor and you're confident in that, then you shouldn't feel "threatened" by what I know. I would never, ever claim to know half of what doctors know, but I don't just take what they say as gospel. I question them. I research on my own. It works for me too. If I weren't that kind of person, Isabella would have missed out on a lot. She would have been ignored. But she wasn't, because I was yelling on her behalf all along. We actually had to switch neurologists with Isabella because the neuro actually said to me "you know too much about a disorder I know nothing about and I don't like it." I give her an A for honesty but a big fat F in humble pie. The next neuro? After talking for 15 minutes, he looked at me and said "I bet you know more than I know about this whole Liss thing don't you?" I looked at him and said "I know I do". He laughed and laughed hard. You know what? I loved him instantly. I actually went into his office and told him Isabella needed to be weaned off this medicine and increase the other one. You know what he said? "That's exactly what I think, you're smart.....ever wanted to be a doctor?" Nope. :) He wasn't the least bit threatened by what I knew. Of course he didn't know a lot about Lissencephaly, why would he? It's not like I knew more about epilepsy or something totally common. I HAD to learn everything. Nobody else knew anything. It's survival....plain and simple. When we met with the doctor in Chicago to discuss Isabella, that doctor was impressed with my knowledge since I had only known she had Liss for 6 weeks. You know why I knew so much? I had googled my brains out and read ALL of his research papers on it. Half of it might as well have been in swahili, but I learned.....fast. He gave me a lot of knowledge on that trip and I am grateful. If it has to do with myself or my family, I will learn and I will learn quickly. I will look at things from *every* angle, not just one. Stooopid doctors is what I say. :)

So, off to the midwife we go. Funny, because at the very beginning of the pregnancy I had an appointment with this midwife, but canceled, thought I should go with an "all knowing" doctor. Should have listened to my own voice. I am learning how to do that, very slowly. Eventually God, I promise you won't have to run me over with Mack trucks anymore. I swear. I'm getting there.........