Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Dec
16
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“Was There Still A Heartbeat During The Ultrasound?”
“Was there still a heartbeat during the ultrasound?” – OB to mother at an OB appointment, while looking for fetal heart tones. The mother had her OB appointment immediately after an ultrasound.
There are 15 comments to this post.
Maybe if you stopped looking for a heartbeat in my baby’s foot!
Ever notice OBs rarely palpate before trying to find a heartbeat? No wonder it takes them so freaking long!
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Selia Reply:
December 17th, 2011 at 2:49 am (Quote)
My home birth midwife just went to a military hospital with a client for a military mandated check-up/physical. The doc didn’t feel at all but was nice so she felt she could talk to him and asked him how he knew where to put the gel. He said he just puts it in the middle. She questioned him about Leopold’s Maneuver (the feeling for baby’s position) and he admitted he wasn’t good at it, so he doesn’t use it! Luckily he was pretty cool with midwives and allowed her to teach him. I know this doc and he scored really high on his ob rotation! (family practice doc, so at least it wasn’t his specialty he sucked at) Go figure. At least he had a good attitude though.
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Jane Reply:
December 17th, 2011 at 4:22 am (Quote)
But think about what palpating the abdomen would do to those OBs who are choosing not to find the baby’s position first:
1) Would require “diagnosing” a non-medical non-catastrophic condition. It would require knowing about something that’s perfectly normal and healthy and doesn’t need to be fixed.
2) Would require touching the mother gently and feeling the baby as if she and the baby were people rather than a medical condition that needed to be fixed. Would require knowing a bit more about both of them.
Also, it takes time, and they don’t want to spend fifteen seconds up front to find the baby’s position since to these OBs it’s not important. Sometimes the doctor hits the jackpot and the heartbeat is right there, so it’s like winning the lottery. The rest of the time the doctor is frustrated and just figures “this is how long it takes.” (They call that intermittent reinforcement, right? It’s the hardest kind of reinforcement to break.)
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I love how the doctor passes along the frustration to the mother. As if the mother would go to the ultrasound, see no heartbeat, and then go right ahead to her OB appointment and save that information as a surprise, or just keep it to herself and hope no one would notice…?
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This doc is just a jerk, IMO. Saying something like that to mom, because he’s just too darn lazy? Yuck.
And, true, palpating is an art, but it’s not THAT hard to find baby’s back as opposed to the legs. I’m a laywomen, and I can find it. And besides my own belly, I’ve only ever palpated one other mother’s. Seriously, if it doesn’t make beeping noises or have sparkly lights, docs don’t believe it is useful.
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This happened to me. I had a midwife, but had to meet her supervising OB. I decided to do it at my 17 wk appt to try and find out the gender. I had my ultrasound and we saw a very energetic little guy and then the nurse practitioner comes in. The first thing that went wrong was that the actual OB decided not to come back for his appts after he took his lunch. Next, the np sits there trying to find the heartbeat and says to me “Well, it’s a good thing you already had your ultrasound and saw the baby alive…” !!!!!!! Really??! She then proceeded to diagnose me with complete placenta previa without a thorough exam! (I’d had a previa “scare” with my first and had to seek a second opinion to find out what I already knew – no previa – so I was well-versed in this AND I knew to trust my instinct bc it was right the first time around, too) Same this time, too – went for a second opinion and found: NO previa. Ughhh!!!!
My midwife *always* knew exactly where to listen for my baby’s heartbeat, and I always knew where she could find it as well bc I was so in tune with my baby… But I go to an OB and they can’t find it. :rollseyes:
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I was way better than the nurses at finding my twins’ heartbeats during my three weeks of hospital bedrest. They’d come in for my required hour-per-shift of monitoring, and I’d say, “She’s over here today, and he’s up here.” Without fail, they’d start in the middle, struggle to find the heartbeats for several minutes, and end up exactly where I told them in the first place. By the end of my stay, I was hooking myself up to the monitor before they even got into the room.
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haha this is hilarious! i never thought about it before but its true most OBs just put the gel in the middle and dont move the doppler!! my last was breech and i always said the best place to find his heart beat is on the right just inside my hip and i would point to the spot but no they knew better so basically covered my belly in gel trying to get a clear reading (meanwhile bub is kicking my cervix hard being footling breech and hating the doppler at the best of times) guess where they ended up finding a clear FHR?? hmmm maybe listening to the person with the baby inside them might help 
im sorry you ended up with a d*#k of an ob
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In other words, you didn’t read the results of the ultrasound and you’re being lazy/ getting frustrated in your search of the heartbeat, so you’re going to cause undue stress on the mother.
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