2nd OB Appointment

Sorry about the radio silence as of late. I have been going through a lot of turmoil at work for the last few weeks and I'm feeling like I'm at some risk of losing my job in the next few months. I've been too bummed out to blog about it or really about anything.

I had my 2nd appointment today with my regular OB or, at least, what I thought was going to be an appointment with my regular OB. I was initially supposed to have an appointment in the afternoon and the office called on Friday to see if I could could switch to a morning appointment. I said that was fine, but when I checked at reception for my appointment, I found out my doctor was not even going to be there today and I would need to see another doctor. Nice -- thanks for letting me know ahead of time.

I was promptly escorted back to see Dr. R, who I take it was a very busy guy today since he needed to see both his own patients and all of my OB's as well. I was left waiting in the exam room for almost 30 minutes before the doctor showed up. He then spent several minutes trying to find my chart in my big stack of medical records. He eventually figured out that I didn't have a chart because my chart was in the computer. I assumed he would need to step out to retrieve my chart from the computer to review before examining me, but no, he just kept going. I still don't really understand the whole transition process that my doctor's office is going through as they move to a computerized record system. If their records are going to be totally computerized with no printouts, then don't they need computer terminals in each exam room?

I had been expecting to have ultrasound this appointment, but I had been put in a room without an ultrasound machine, which Dr. R said was done by his staff to "torment him" and he was not sure he would be able to pick up a heartbeat on the Doppler because it was so early. It took him a while, but he did eventually find the baby's heartbeat. I was actually okay with not having an ultrasound. I have not really been feeling anxious about the baby lately other than how all this work stress is impacting him/her. I'm actually pretty sure I have been feeling the baby kicking for the last week when I'm lying quitely in bed, although Dr. R says it is really highly unlikely that I could feeling kicking this early.

My only "complaint" worth sharing with the doctor as far as pregnancy symptoms go is that I have been having a lot of clear discharge on and off for about 2 weeks now. This makes me concerned that I could be leaking amniotic fluid, so Dr. R did an internal exam to check the fluid. Even though I have had regular appointments with the speculum and more vaginal wandings than I can count in the last year, this was the first internal exam that I have had performed by a male doctor since my last pregnancy (my RE's office is all female doctors and my OB is also a women), so that was a bit strange already, but the worst part is Dr. R referred to me as "Sweetie" while doing the exam -- so much for sensitivity training. The fluid looked like normal discharge to him.

So, as you can imagine, I'm still looking to switch OBs. I had given myself permission to not deal with this issue for a while because I have been stressed out enough from work and I did not want to give myself more things to worry about. I have the choice for a new OB narrowed down to 3 practices, but I'm having trouble picking which one to go with since none of the 3 really seems perfect. I need to figure out what is most important to me in terms of prenatal care other than just basic competency, which I'm growing concerned may be lacking with my current care.