Week 23: 15 responses you don't want to hear from your OB/midwife

By Published On: August 8th, 2014

There are a lot of things about pregnancy most doctors […]

week23

There are a lot of things about pregnancy most doctors know—and a lot they don’t know. Isn’t that true of any profession? Except maybe working in an ice cream shop, and even then do we really know how the soft serve machine makes the ice cream come out with just the right consistency? No, we don’t.

I know during pregnancy, I’m always on high alert and watching for things that are supposed to be happening or maybe not supposed to be happening. Like having the right consistency in my soft serve ice cream—pre-gestational diabetes, of course.

Even with my third pregnancy I’ve experienced things I didn’t before. I talk to my clinic’s RN more often than I do my husband. Mostly because she’s interested in the consistency of the mucous discharge that’s come to plague my underpants. My husband, is not.

Of course doctors try. Well, most try. I’m sure a few underachievers occasionally slip through the cracks and really confuse the entire situation, which let’s face it, can be confusing enough as it is.  Here are a few things I know I wouldn’t want to hear my OB say to me during pregnancy:

  1. I dunno what it is. I guess, maybe you should come back if it keeps happening?
  2. Well I’ll be …
  3. Hmm.
  4. Huh.
  5. Huh?
  6. Dude! What. Is. that?
  7. I guess that’s normal.
  8. So, you are pregnant, right?
  9. Interesting.
  10. Uh …
  11. Holy Mother …
  12. Weird.
  13. [insert awkward chuckle here]
  14. That’s just … really something.
  15. I’m stumped.

For the most part my prenatal care has been exceptional, and if my doctors have no idea what’s wrong, they’ve certainly never led me to believe they didn’t know. Which I think is part of their job. Again, if you want soft serve ice cream and ask me how the machine gets the consistency just right, I’m totally going to pull anything out of my backside that sounds reasonable. Just so you don’t think I don’t know how to do my job.

The last thing anyone wants is for someone to feel like the only place they have to turn is Google—where you’ll consume yourself with worry about your unborn child developing a condition that is only real on cartoons. Or Yahoo! Answers, where everyone will tell you that the thing you’re experiencing is not normal and don’t walk, but run to the hospital. Because, dude! What. Is. that?

Let’s leave the guessing up to our health care professionals and hope they know what’s going on. In the meantime there are more important things to focus on during this gestational journey, like soft serve ice cream.