On Wednesday I had my 10-week appointment with one of the PAs I saw during my pregnancy with Emelia. I don’t think she remembered me, but I mesh with her so much better than the other PA I was working with. Unfortunately, my blood pressure was elevated and she recommended I start blood pressure medication. At first, I was really upset because I’m starting blood pressure meds much earlier than my other pregnancies. But later, I went back and read my old blog posts from my first trimester with Emelia and my BP was elevated every. single. week for my fertility appointments. I just didn’t actually start meds until later.
So I’m okay with this plan. I’m starting Labetelol 200 mg twice a day. Since my nausea and gagging are so bad in the morning, this puts a slight damper on everything since my body wants to expel everything I put in my mouth before 11 am.
She also wanted to recheck my progesterone level and see where I’m sitting after two weeks or so of being on the suppositories. Flipping through my chart (literally, because they still do paper charting which I’m not a fan of), she started running through a checklist.
“We’ll also do STD testing and run your thyroid levels.” Her finger ran down the list.
“There’s genetic testing, but we don’t recommend you do—”
“I actually want to do that,” I interrupted firmly.
At my last appointment, the PA did the same thing. I was the one to bring up wanting testing.
“We’re a prolife clinic,” I was told, “So we don’t do it here, we send you elsewhere for that.”
Both providers never offered to give me any additional information. Genetic testing was like a bad taste in their mouth. If something shows up, we think you’ll abort your baby, was the underlying message.
Two weeks ago, the PA said she’d send the paperwork for the referral. Now, in the office with the other PA, we both saw the referral. Sitting in the chart. It was never sent out.
When I brought this up, she shrugged. “She must have forgotten to send it. I’ll send it today. Just a warning though, it could take a few weeks before they call.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Well, I have a certain window in order to do this. Is that going to be an issue?”
No, she said, it will be fine. Dismissed.
My acupuncturist later that week told me this is a tactic that pro-life clinics use to deter patients from genetic testing. Which makes me both confused and very sad. Knowledge is powerful. Wanting to take charge of my health and be proactive shouldn’t be an evil thing. It didn’t sit well with me and it still doesn’t.
We ended up having an ultrasound because she couldn’t capture the heartbeat on the doppler.
Still got a healthy baby in there, measuring a few days ahead. Wiggling around. Everything was still looking good.
A few days after my appointment I got a phone call from a medical assistant who went over my labs. My progesterone level “looked good.” and I was to continue on my progesterone.
“What is it?” I asked. It drives me crazy when clinics paternalize test results and don’t tell you the actual result.
I was told 41 and I was in zone 3 whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. I should have pressed more, but I also wanted to hurl because it was still early in the morning.
My TSH (thyroid level) was also slightly elevated which she said could be due to normal pregnancy, but they wanted to check it again in a month. After looking up the fact that indeed your thyroid levels could be slightly elevated in pregnancy anyway, I’m hesitant to do further testing since that always seems to open a can of worms with this clinic.
Afterward, I told Chris what happened and said I was really confused about the progesterone level. I told him about the zone thing and he’s like, I bet we could look that up. I bet it’s that Catholic doctor thing with that progesterone form you signed.
Sure enough, he found something and emailed it to me. I have heard of NaPro technology before which they always referred to as a “mini IVF” using fewer meds and focusing on the quality of a small number of eggs versus trying to get a bunch of eggs in a traditional IVF. I had no idea this was a Catholic thing, set up to appease the Catholic Church in doing fertility treatments. And sure enough, there was a progesterone chart.
A chart from a Catholic doctor from a religious institution, the Pope Paul VI Institute. I’m not going to link it here, but you can Google it if you want. There was zone 3.
I leaned into my screen as Chris came upstairs from his office.
“So this bold line up the middle…that’s the average progesterone level.” I squinted.
“And then that means zone 3 is—”
“Above normal levels,” Chris finished.
I’m over ten weeks. I was always told the placenta starts taking over making progesterone at that time. And I’m not even doing IVF. Let me say that again. I’m not doing IVF.
I don’t have a problem with progesterone. I have a problem with feeling like a pawn in someone’s religious agenda. I have a problem when someone uses their religion to direct my medical care.
I went back and forth that day, debating if I should call the clinic and talk to a PA and ask her why exactly I need to be on this progesterone if everything seems to be perfectly fine. Even a few weeks ago, my therapist said she was confused, because everything seemed to be fine with the baby, and my body was probably making the right amount of progesterone I needed.
I’ll stay on the progesterone, I have no problem continuing it as long as it’s medically indicated.
And right now, I’m not really sure it is. At least from a secular, independent, scientific standpoint. If I was at a non-religious clinic, odds are they probably would never have run my progesterone in the first place.
I saw my acupuncturist the next day (Thank God for her because I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have her in my corner.) and we talked it over. She agreed it was a pretty shitty thing, but in the end I decided for my own sanity, I would just keep taking the supplements. The fact that they had pushed me to do shots for the entirety of my first trimester makes me stabby (hah) when I think about the fact I almost put myself through that for nothing but pain and expense.
I also know I’m already fucking exhausted advocating for myself while in the midst of an unplanned pregnancy. My acupuncturist asked if I considered switching clinics. I shook my head. If it isn’t this, it would be something else, I told her. After my pregnancy with Olivia, I learned to push back and question my medical care during pregnancy. Turns out, I found, there’s a lot pregnant women go through that they don’t have to put up with. I remember even writing on here that I felt like I was constantly pushing back and asking questions about Emelia’s pregnancy and that was at a completely different clinic.
To protect my already depleting mental health, I left it alone.
Today, I went to a craft fair and had to sit down three times because I wanted to either throw up or faint. But I had promised Olivia we’d go and meet my parents and sister and I made it. Afterward, it was so nice out, and Chris was mowing the lawn, so I sat outside in the sun and watched my girls play in the leaves.
