When To Visit Doctor To Confirm Pregnancy
Doctors Visits
The Doctors Visit is the next step after you have a positive home pregnancy test and have had some of the other symptoms such as nausea, missed period, tender breasts, tiredness, mood swings, and the need to make frequent visits to the bathroom.
Doctor’s Confirmation of Pregnancy
The Doctor will be able to confirm the pregnancy and check for Additional pregnancy symptoms such as an enlarged uterus and the colour of the cervix. The cervix is the small opening and surrounding tissue between the vagina and uterus.
You may be referred by your Doctor to an Obstetrician (a Doctor specialising in pregnancies) straight away if they suspect that there could be complications based on your symptoms or medical history. Otherwise, you usually will see an obstetrician at about twelve weeks.
First Routine Doctors Visit or Obstetrician
Your first Doctors visit or appointment with the Obstetrician will involve them asking many questions and doing a series of routine tests.
Questions
- Your Medical History – previous illnesses, your allergies, medications, the pattern of periods, whether you have had any previous pregnancies, miscarriages or abortions, your family medical history including any history of multiple births in the family or genetic disorders
- Your lifestyle – your diet, whether drink or smoke, your work, fitness and exercise regime
Routine Tests
- An internal examination – which will confirm the pregnancy and estimate the due date
- A urine test – to confirm the pregnancy and to check protein levels – high protein may indicate a potential health problem
- Recording your weight and height
- A Pap test – some small cells from your cervix are collected and tested
- A Physical examination
- A Blood test – to check your blood group, whether you are anaemic, and for other blood-related diseases or conditions
You will normally visit your Obstetrician monthly until late in the pregnancy when you may begin to visit him more frequently up to delivery.
Routinely at these doctors visits your pregnant belly will be examined to measure the growth of the uterus, your blood pressure will be checked, and you will be weighed.
After 12 weeks, the Obstetrician will also listen to the heartbeat of the baby.
It is easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of information and the number of questions that you have for the Doctors visit, and it is easy to forget to ask them when you are there.
To help you we would recommend that you make a note of them in your diary as they come to you, and to write down any important information that the Doctor or Obstetrician tells you at your visit. Again it is easy to get confused and to forget things. If it is written in your diary, you can also read more about it at home afterwards once you get home from your Doctors Visits.
