Ultrasound Continued

As I mentioned yesterday, my wife and I went for our lengthy 20 minute ultrasound on Monday.  Let me just say that the second time viewing an ultrasound such as this was no less amazing than the first time with our current son.  While also enabling the doctor's to make sure that our baby has ten fingers, ten toes, and all the necessary parts of the human body (thank God its not a dolphin), it also allows us to get a little glimpse into the world that our baby has been inhabiting.  Its a tight little watery world and from the looks of it, our baby is perfectly accustomed to it and enjoys its warm embrace.  It also loves exploring its little world as for almost the entire duration of the ultrasound it was moving around as much as possible.  I imagined it trying to hide from the imaging device pressing against my wife's swollen belly, playing its own little game of hide and seek.  At one point it had its feet crossed, then turned and moved away.  One of the last images we saw before the ultrasound was over was a side view where we could see its entire body.  While we were watching, it brought its hand to its face and scratched its chin before moving the hand away, making a fist, and then opening the hand back up.  It was definitely a cool thing to see.  Of course, at one point during the ultrasound, I think when it was scratching its chin, I let my subconscious do the talking and I called it a he.  While I don't care what we have, as long as its healthy, I guess there is a part of me that wants another son.  Yet, I have another four months to wait before finding out if it will be a boy or a girl.  My inner self thinks it will be a boy probably because just going back a few generations in my family, my dad had a brother and I had a brother, and so to the logic continues that our son will have a brother.   Well, there is a 50/50 shot of having a boy.  Only time will tell now.  Yet for all the excitement that we had watching our little baby swimming around in its warm cocoon, I did get slightly annoyed after the fact at the doctor who did the imaging.  It turns out that after my wife left the office, she got a call saying that "Everything was fine", but the doctor wanted her to set up another appointment for a few more images that she wasn't able to get.  Really?  She had 20 minutes to get all the images she needed and five minutes after my wife leaves she gets the call?  I could understand if they saw something abnormal or something wrong, but they explicitly stated that nothing was wrong, they just wanted some more images. 

 

Well, guess what, they aren't getting anymore images.  This isn't the first time that they have wanted to do extra ultrasounds.  When we went for the first one, an internal to see if the baby was actually a baby and if there were two, they suggested we get another one a few weeks after the appointment to make sure everything was on track.  Even then, nothing was wrong, my wife just happened to figure out early that she was pregnant and she happened to show really quickly with a sudden weight gain that eventually leveled itself out.  We refused that one because we felt it was unnecessary and for the same reason, we will refuse this current one they are requesting.  Perhaps what annoys me the most about this latest one is that they had the gall to set up an appointment for her without even checking at an hour that she wouldn't be able to make it.  Further, she would have to go to Yale New Haven hospital to have it done instead of just going to the regular office.  When she got the call to confirm the appointment, she canceled it.  The less intrusion from the doctors the better.  All we need is for them to go poking around when they don't need to and screw something up.  Granted, an ultrasound is one of the least intrusive things they could do, but it doesn't matter.  Its not that I have some horrible gripe with doctors, I just don't like their intrusive nature when nothing is wrong.  So what if we have excellent health insurance that covers everything, it doesn't mean that they can just do extra work so that they can get paid more.  Doctor's have a very important function when it comes to emergency care and sustaining life that otherwise would not be sustained.  However, beyond that, I find that they intrude into a person's life a little too much.  Sometimes it seems as if they are more concerned with making an extra buck off of insurance than with the actual well being of a patient.  But that is the current state of affairs unfortunately.  Since I am on the doctor's track right now, I have noticed a difference between this pregnancy and my wife's last one.  The last one occurred while her doctor's office was overseen by St. Rafael's, at that time a competing hospital to Yale New Haven.  Since then, Yale took over St. Rafael's and is now overseeing the doctor's office.  I wonder if Yale altered how things are done so that doctor's now seek to get more procedures done to rake in more money.  Just a thought.  In any case, we only have four more months till our new bundle of joy enters this world and our lives take a turn towards the crazier.  For now, I must get my morning rolling.