Rollercoaster

Sorry we haven't posted anything on the blog for ages; w'vee have had an incredibly scary two weeks.

We went for the second ultrasound and saw Picard once again. Everything seemed fine and we were incredibly happy to find out the Captain's sex (for those who don't believe we should find out, don't read the next entry of the blog). We will let the rest of you know soon.
Anyway, like I said everything seemed fine until the doc said that she wanted to do an AFP screening to test for Down's syndrome because the Captian's kidneys were slightly dilated. Of course, as you can imagine this was devastating news for us and we completely freaked out.
So we waited the whole weekend for the results to come in (the longest weekend of our entire lives I might add).
All our dreams and hopes seemed dashed and as much as the doc tried to comfort us and say that the chances were very low indeed, it still had a very worrying effect on us.

Finally, Tuesday comes round and Sara calls the clinic. The nurse matter of factly just says the test came in negative and not to worry. When Sara tried to ask questions she was told to stop worrying and she can talk to the doctor on her next visit that was scheduled for December 28th.
For anyone who knows Sara, you will know that she is not to be fobbed off. So I called and asked to speak with Doc. We eventually were able to get an appointment for the next morning.
The Doctor was very nice but still did not ease our fears.

I think the point I am trying to get at here is that here in America I feel that child birth is seen as an inconvenience to the medical profession and that the parents are seen as difficult patients if questions are raised and if we ask for a second opinion.
It seems to me that the clinics are no more than mechanic shops and the Doctors are just glorified mechanics. They talk to you with an almost condescending arrogance as if to say "Don't worry about this because even if I told you what I think, you wouldn't understand it anyway."
We have decided to find a midwife to help us understand what is going on and hope that this will make things easier on us.
For those of you over the other side of the pond, that must seem like an easy thing to do. This isn't the case here I'm afraid. Over here in the wonderful U.S. of A most midwives are kinda crazy--they want you to have the child naturally and don't believe in drugs of any kind being administered to the mother. (To hell with that, said Sara) Not only that, they all seemed to be way too in touch with themselves. One website for a midwife kept referring to the child as a 'blessing' and the birth of the aforementioned as 'the mystery'.
Too much religion or too many drugs at college is the impression I got from most of them.
Finally though, we have found one midwife who we like and she seems normal and works with the hospital that we will be using.

So, where are we now?

We don't know. Although we have been told that the Captain is O.K. and in the doctor's opinion, everything is fine, we don't feel convinced. The clinic doesn't shoot us straight and we still feel like we are an inconvenience to them. We are going to see a specialist tomorrow and hopefully this will ease our concerns.
Pray for us if you will but more importantly, pray for Captian Picard. He needs all our prayers at the moment.
Jed