So, some back story, when I found my OBGYN for my pregnancy, it was all pretty rushed because I hadn’t been to the gynecologist for two years. It was 2021, and because of the pandemic I had been putting it off, like I feel like most people were. So when I was trying to get pregnant, I just made an appointment with the best rated doctor in my area, we didn’t have a sit down interview to see if our ideologues meshed or anything.

By the time my appointment came, I was already pregnant! We were so excited and the appointments shifted to prenatal care. Because of covid procedures, there was no “shopping around” for other doctors. And then I became considered “high risk” so there was no switching.

I liked my doctor. She wasn’t bad or anything. But when it came to my birth, I feel like we didn’t agree on a lot of things that I feel like she wanted me to. Specifically, what I wanted as far as delaying the cord clamping, she disagreed. She said in her experience, generally delayed cord clamping sent more babies to the NICU than just clamping the cord as soon as the baby was born.

Well, my baby did spend almost a week in the NICU. And it’s not her fault or anything, I just feel like had my baby’s cord been clamped, maybe he could have avoided the NICU. He was severely jaundiced, and needed light therapy for several days. From what my doctor told me before, I believed that delayed cord clamping caused jaundice, not the other way around?

And looking back I do feel like my wants for my birth were ignored. I had also wanted to push on all fours. And she laughed it off like I was crazy to want to push in any other position than on my back. And I had asked if my husband could catch our baby, and she thought “that crazy Kardashian show” put that in my head, which wasn’t the case. My doctor back in San Francisco where my daughter was born had asked if he wanted to catch our daughter, but we were both too scared to do it, so I just thought maybe this time around we could. She just kept saying she let a husband do it before and the woman ended up needing so many stitches because she “couldn’t teach him all my years of experience in 10 minutes”. It just felt so dismissive.

Well it’s almost been a year, and I’m getting calls from the office to schedule my annual exam. And I don’t dislike her, she is a fabulous doctor in all other areas. She is very knowledgeable about my specific conditions and referred me to amazing high risk doctors for my pregnancy. I just don’t know if I should leave?

Should I make an annual exam appointment elsewhere? What if that doctor is worse? I mean there’s some absolutely terrible ones out there. I’ve read reviews, but I also know sometimes they should be taken with a grain of salt. So I feel sort of stuck. Is it a bad idea to shop around for OBs before you’re pregnant? I’m planning on having one last baby, so I want that birth to be redemptive. I want to be heard. Should I talk to my OBGYN and discuss it with her? Or shop around for a new one preemptively?

And if I should shop around, how easy is it to do that? Just schedule a consultation? Call and ask “hi, I’m thinking of becoming pregnant, can we schedule an appointment to see if it’s a good fit?”