Appointment city

So yesterday was the big day o'appointments, which was a bit disappointing, but all the news was good.

So first: weight gain was an impressive 6 lbs for the month, so we're back on track
Good strong heartbeat and a nice, visible body part sticking out while my belly was being measured
My cervix is absolutely fine and any pain I have felt in it was either my own fault or the baby's head bouncing. The recommendation was: stop packing and walking so much. Duh.
Had the gestational diabetes screening but haven't heard back yet

Birth plans and such went ahead, although we didn't really get to meet with our potential doula and in fact her holiday dates may not really work out against our due date, so we have other people to call. We talked about inductions with both the ob and our nurse and generally they're not in favour of inducing, so it looks like we may go the whole hog and do the wait around for things to start thing. I think physically this makes a lot of sense: if the baby and I aren't naturally ready, why would we start with drugs? But emotionally I just want the baby out safe at 38 weeks.

It puts the idea of a c-section back into my head, but I will sit with it for a while yet. So right now the birth plan is looking a lot like our prior birth plan for the start of it (wait for contractions; go to hospital) but then gets very picky about things like monitoring and pushing and stuff.

The meeting with the psychiatrist did nothing to improve my outlook on the psychiatric approach, that's for sure. I brought Carl along because I was under the impression that we were meeting to discuss how to manage the labour as well as post-partum stuff, but he was mostly ignored and treated like some kind of appendage to me in the worst ways.

For example I asked what supports there were for men, and she got all enthused and handed him a book called "The Post-Partum Dad" which might sound cute except it's not at all about being a DAD or say, having feelings about your first daughter dying, but instead is about how to support your wife, with such helpful tips as "make eye contact when you speak to your wife."

Bah.

So mostly the focus was on me, and seemed geared towards preventing post-partum depression or post-partum psychosis. Now that's well and good, but it wasn't what I had completely understood the meeting to be about, and when I asked about specific labour supports and things we didn't get very good answers. I hate to be cynical but it may be because they don't make a drug for that, and after all she was a psychiatrist and not a social worker.

She did have a few good insights though, one of which is that once we're moved and settled that may be when I find things emotionally hard because I'll be tired and heavy and I won't have all these other things distracting me. That's very true for me especially. So it's not that she was entirely useless but... I think I have been spoilt by my current therapist.

The psychiatrist didn't blink an eye when I mentioned PTSD or DID, because by then I had figured her out (or so I flatter myself). I said "I have been diagnosed with both those things, but I've never been medicated or had a disruption in work that was significant." That was the golden key towards functionality, and so we just went on from there. I found that kind of annoying on the one hand, but then I was the one that chose to phrase it like that because well, it's true enough.

I made her eyes glaze over once. I was talking about flashbacks and she asked what stress in my life had triggered them (this was the stage that drove me back into therapy in 1998; middle of the night anxiety, shitty sex life, etc. etc.) and I said that although I had a stressful job at the time, I thought it was actually the reverse, that my life was almost too stable and that we (I slipped into the we but with Carl there it was not clear which we) had a sense of home and that probably that stability made it possible for memories to be shared. She seemed to think I was off my rocker, and again, I'm so glad I have a therapist that isn't like that.

Why wouldn't it be a healthy thing even if it looks and feels like shit?

She also asked about mental illness in my family and that was amusing as I said "would you like the short list, or the long list?"

Overall... I think it's good to have seen her because I think she probably is good at one thing and that's getting involved if someone gets a serious depression, and it could happen, and it would be a good thing to have someone who could step in with some SSRIs or whatever. But otherwise it was a complete waste of time.

Carl was really angry at how he was treated and how he's not seen as a caregiver for the baby or vulnerable to depression, too. And I agree with him. We're going to take it up with our ob and nurse after we have the baby and suggest maybe they could be leaders in developing something for dads. Because really, if I were to get wiped out in a depression, who do they think would do something about it?