The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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I had a 12 week prenatal appointment, and the heartbeat sounds normal, so that's good.
They also drew 5 vials of blood without much explanation, which has happened with previous pregnancies as well. There was a new questionnaire about belonging to groups with higher than usual genetic risks, which included Ashkenazi, which I had heard of, as well as certain Asan groups and French Quebecois, which I hadn't heard of before. There were no questions about my gender, which appeared two years ago. The position of the ultrasound scheduling office is "don't call us, we'll call you."
Happy to hear that. Do they actually tend to postpone the scheduling quite a lot, or do they just not want to be bothered by nagging worried first-timers? On the blood, you can get a surprising amount of information just from the mother's blood, so that seems reasonable to me. Though it's weird they don't mention it, we usually got told explicitly that the blood values look good/not good, but presumably that means everything is fine for you. My wife has chronic low iron values unless she eats way more meat than she likes to.
We recently had the big checkup ultrasound (around 14-16 weeks, dunno how it varies by country, I presume not much?) for our second and everything came out fine which was a great relieve. My wife got cortisone in the first few weeks of the pregnancy when we didn't know, which increases the chance of lip/facial clefts + I have a minor facial cleft myself, so we were worried about that - genetic and environmental risks generally add up quite well unfortunately. We're also moving into the age bracket where major disabilities become frighteningly common.
Congratulations on your wife's pregnancy!
Maybe the person who schedules the ultrasounds is out this week or something? They also work with students, so last time I got two slightly longer appointments where an ultrasound student did the exam under guidance, so it's possible the scheduling is a bit complicated. They do an anatomy scan at 18-20 weeks, and sometimes look at something at 10 weeks, but I've never managed to get an appointment in time for that, though I probably could if I really insisted.
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