Your family doctor or your OB?

At your ob, you'll hear the baby at every appointment.

My family doctor.
hes also the pediatrition and the one doing most of my ultrasounds and physicals and such, hes looking for an OB for when im further along.
But hes got that little monitor thing that lets you hear the heart beat, he used it the last time i was there, and all we gotta do is ask if we can hear it.

How can a family doctor do ultrasounds? How is he set up like that? You are nearly 5 months along, right? How far along do you need to be for an OB?

This sounds really hokey, Krystine. You should have an actual doctor who will be delivering you and has all the equipment required to monitor the baby, etc.

Yeah I don't know but 1 family practice that has ultrasounds oin their office and really it's just that the clinic is in a large building with radiology as a specialty clinic on another floor. I would think a family practitioner would have turned you over to an OB by now, I mean I'm not even pregnant and I was turned over to an OB for cysts! It's a specialty service, it does happen infrequently but to also be the pediatrician yours or when the babies born or both?

My OB who delivered Christian is my family dr as well. How strange that he isnt even an OB and he has an U/S machine....Why do you need to ask to hear the heartbeat ? That isn't an option it's mandatory on every monthly check up.

My Mistake Ingi.
I have my ultrasounds in the same building as my family doctor Or he assigns us to another doctors office to do the ultrasounds. Its not my family doctor that does it.
We are finding an OB now, our family doctor has set up looking for one and we should hear results. Our doctor does all the check-ups up until like the 24-28th weeks, then the OB takes me and i still update my doctor.

Why would you personally update your family doctor? I don't get it.

Why does your doctor find your OB for you? Don't YOU find your OB?

No the doctor finds one for us.
Our family doctor said if the OB we have doesnt have very many appointments to see how things are progressing to see him in between, and to also keep him updated.

...Ingi is this such a bad thing?
I dont see that its any big deal, i guess its how things in canada are done...
I like that my family doctor wants to be updated, and that we dont have to run around looking for an OB, our doctor finds one for us and we have a meeting with the OB.

Emma is in Canada and her situation was totally different.

Every month you get an appointment with your OB. The first appointment is your intake appointment and it can last over an hour with all the paperwork, weighing, measuring, possibly and US and a pelvic exam/pap smear. Then the appointments come every 4 weeks, you are weighed, blood pressure checked and your belly is measured. The doctor listens to the baby's heartbeat at EVERY appointment and the heartrate is recorded in your file.

During later appointments, you may also get another ultrasound and have to do the Gestational Diabetes test. Towards the end you start seeing your OB every 2 weeks instead of every 4 and the same process goes on - weighed and measured, etc. After a few weeks of going every 2 weeks, you start going every week and you really feel like you are getting to know your doctor and nurse.

Your family doctor has absolutely ZERO to do with your pregnancy if he is not an OB. Unless you have a medical condition outside of pregnancy - and even then he would be getting your chart from your OB to find out about your pregnancy, he would not rely on word of mouth.

So, no, it doesn't sound right at all. None of your experience sounds even remotely like that of any other pregnant woman I have ever spoken to and/or experienced myself. That would be why I questioned it. Canada isn't a third world nation, you have excellent health care - I just wondered why your personal experience was so incredibly different than everyone else's.

Some women go through 9 months of pregnancy without ever seeing an OB, only a midwife. This happens regularly IN NORTH AMERICA. ZOMZ she's being seen by a family doctor!

I dont understand why your attacking what im saying.
My doctor sends me to the OB i get when im around the 24th-28th weeks,
he does the physicals and check-ups, blood pressure too, assigns me either in the building or to another hosiptal to get my ultrasounds.
The only thing that is different is that my doctor looks for my OB and wants to still be updated with how my progress is doing.
He did not really touch base on what the OB would be doing very much, but said the OB would do the check-ups ultrasounds weight measurements and so on.
Yet youve attacked everything i say.
My family doctor from previous patience, would do all of that AND deliver the baby, but things are different now and he only takes the patient up until the 24-28 weeks and still sees the patient to see how progress is.

How was it an attack? I said it was different than anything I'd heard of. I didn't attack anything. I told you how I had never heard of anything you'd said.

Altari, a family doctor is not the same as a midwife. A midwife deal soley with a pregnant woman. I much prefer midwives to doctors for myself. They are more hands on.

to me it seemed like attacking what i was saying about my doctors appointment.
Everytime on here one way or another i get attacked, asking a question that just needs clarification ATTACKED. replying to something ATTACK. posting something ATTACK.
And why? maybe cuz i voiced my opion a little too open mindedly, yet even though i bite my tounge when i read something, i still get attacked or put down.

A woman does not *need* to see an OB, and that was my point. There are many MANY family practice doctors that have an "Emergency OB" affiliation.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to deliver a baby. People were doing it for thousands of years before obstetrics came along. Women with normal, healthy pregnancies don't need to see an OB for any reason other than convention, and a family doctor is more than qualified to make the determination on whether or not an OB is needed in a specific situation.

i think my step mom said she saw hers at almost 28 weeks or something like that.

Some doctors just listen with the steth, from what I remember when I bounced between docs when my OB was off. They didn't necessarily use the little portable heart beat kadingas.

Wrong!

Mississauga is my neighbouring city, so it's not in the boonies or anything. I don't get why YOU would be seeing your family doctor until 24-28 weeks gestation. It doesn't make sense at all!

I've noticed that you are VERY inconsistent with every post you make.

In school (Medical Office) when we talk about family practitioners we were told they occasionally do OBGYN OR Ped work and maybe what was it? Dermatology I think. But OBGYN, Pediatrics and Dermatology are considered specialties meaning most GPs and FPs will refer patients to a specialty clinic for their specialty needs. But I don't get why a FP would see you for nearly 3/4s of the pregnancy then refer you elsewhere. Didn't you say that this doctor told you you were somewhere between 8-12 weeks at one point in time?

So its not just me! I was reading a few old posts to check consistency. Something seems very fishy. Not to mention she seems very paranoid about people always "attacking" her while at the same time says some, I guess you could say controversially attacking, things to others.