Midwife Visit #2

Today we had a visit with the midwife for the 12 week appointment.

We discussed the blood test and urine test results and talked a bit about the nitrofurantoin. Our midwife is originally from Australia, and she was surprised that nitrofurantoin is even prescribed here. She said that it’s been dropped in Australia for at least a decade due to the side effects. She wasn’t surprised at the bad time it’s given the Plum carrier.

We also talked more about what tests are available to us for genetic screening. The midwife explained what our health system provided and what the private pay options were. It’s been clear to both of us from the start that we want to do genetic screening for birth defects. The midwife again brought up the topic of what we’d do if we got a positive. She pulled out a handful of different charts explaining what the chances of having a birth defect were based on age, and what the chances of having a miscarriage due to each of the test procedures were. She was very good at putting things into perspective and helping us through the process.

In the end we made an appointment at one of the private clinics to have a neucal translucency ultrasound done with a small battery of blood tests. This has a low rate of false positives, no risk of miscarriage (it’s non-invasive) and up to 95% detection rate. The results are also available right away as opposed to up to several weeks for some of the other tests. If it comes back positive we’ll move on to have an amniocentesis to rule out a false positive.

And the final thing was to listen to the fetal heartbeat. It took a bit of searching, but after a minute or two we could hear the quick whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the fetal heart. It’s fast, beating around 170 beats per minute. And it’s also hard to find. Once the midwife found it, she lost it and took another minute or two to relocate it. When you think about it, the target is still pretty small (the size of a larger plum now) and moves about.

We listened to it and smiled to each other.

“The organs are forming now,” the midwife told us.

Before we left we made another appointment for an ultrasound around the 18 week mark.

“So I guess you’re not faking after all,” was my first comment. She smiled.

Later, over dinner she said to me “I guess the antibiotics didn’t kill it,” betraying her fears. It caught me a bit by surprise. After I thought about how badly it had affected her I realized that this was an understandable concern.

“They wouldn’t have given you a drug that would do that without warning you,” I replied. And again I thought that I too was glad that the heartbeat was there.