Friday, September 23, 2016

I Contradicted A Doc

I don't know if you fathom the extend of such a sentence and act. I actually told a doctor that i disagreed with his diagnosis!
To be clearer, i disagree with my gynecologist's start date of my pregnancy hence my supposed due date and therefore, that my baby is not in the norm size-wise.

Needless to say that in order to actually speak out and tell him/her that you think (s)he actually made a mistake, you have to use a massive amount of tact. Medical staff don't like regular folks like myself telling them: sorry, not sorry, i don't agree with that.

As i mentionned it in an earlier post, my still in-utero baby is small. She's growing well so far but she's under the regular line of growth. Docs are estimating that she's between 10 and 15 days late. It's nothing you'll say, just like i thought as well, except that on a span of 9 months, it's quite a fair amount of time. Except that i disagree with them all on the starting of the pregnancy date. MY date being at least a week later than their. Actually between 7 and 10 days later than what they calculated. 

Obviously, pregnancy, conception times and due dates are not exact science unless you've had an IVF which wasn't my case. 

I mentionned it a few times to the many docs i've seen so far but i never felt heard. So i was like, yeah, well, whatever, i know they're off by at least a week, i'm not gonna worried about this all "too small" thing.
Except that i am tired. I'm exhausted. I could sleep pretty much all day and having to go back and forth to the hospital for monitoring the baby and ultrasound at least once if not twice a week is draining the little energy i have left out of me.
So when i saw my ob/gyn last Monday, i told myself, i HAVE to tell him that i disagree with him, i HAVE to get that load off of my shoulder and maybe, just maybe, he'll realize that yes, my baby is indeed a tiny baby but she's in between the regular growth lines and just fine.

Deep breath.

I used all my ingenuity and tact to tell him just that. I was actually pretty happy with the way it came out. And i was even happier with the way he reacted. He listened to me, double checked his measures and calculation, entered the measurements he did that day along with MY estimated date (8 days later than his) and printed the growth graph. 

And guess what?

It changed nothing. 
NOTHING.

DAMN IT.

The baby is still smaller than what she'd expected to be at the age she has. Whether she's 30 or 31 weeks old, she's still too small.
Which means that i'll still get monitored most likely every week until the end of my pregnancy, that i'll still get to see a ob/gyn every other week and even with all these precautions, i'll still most likely get a tiny baby. 

What worries me now? That she actually stops growing and that they have to trigger the birth a lot earlier than planned. Which might happen actually. 

Or she's just a happy go lucky tiny baby who has her mom already worrying for nothing!


End of it all, you should always say what you have weighing on your heart. It might not change the outcome of the situation but in my case, it surely eased my concerns that the hospital might do with me and my baby something that is not necessary. As i said, in my situation, it doesn't change much. But at least i've unloaded this off of my shoulders.
And it felt good.