Bellingham OB/GYN is recommending the flu vaccine for all pregnant and breast-feeding women. We will be offering the vaccine to our pregnant patients during the 2010 influenza season. For more information on the flu vaccine and for answers to frequently asked questions please visit www.flu.gov. For information on the flu vaccine, please follow the link below:
Influenza vaccination and pregnancy
Congratulations on your pregnancy and welcome to obstetric care from Bellingham Obstetric and Gynecologic Associates. We are a team of health providers devoted to providing the best possible care for you and your baby. While one individual cannot always be available to assist and care for you, as a group we can provide you fully trained specialty care on a 24-hour basis.
Our obstetric group consists of five physicians backed by trained nurses and a superb office staff. As health care providers, we each have many years of specialty training in obstetrics, are members of obstetric professional organizations, and maintain our competency by active participation in continuing medical education. We support and advocate prenatal education, family oriented childbirth, breast-feeding, and healthy and happy pregnancies and births.
Find out more about the following topics below:
• Appointments
• Resource Nurse & Emergencies
• Ultrasounds
• Employer/Medical Leave Forms
• Our Expectations of You
Appointments
Your first appointment will usually be with a doctor to confirm your pregnancy. The second visit will be with the nurse. She will gather pertinent information regarding your medical history, provide you with information and resources. She will also review your lab results from the first visit. Please allow 30 to 45 minutes for each of these appointments.
Subsequent appointments will be, for the most part, with one of the physicians or the nurse midwife. Patients generally are seen monthly through 28 to 30 weeks of pregnancy, every two weeks until 34 to 35 weeks, and weekly thereafter. If problems, concerns, or complications arise at any time, however, you may be seen on an urgent basis or more frequently. You will likely have a pelvic exam at your first appointment and, if not otherwise indicated earlier, weekly near term. Your visits will include weight and blood pressure checks, checking your urine for protein and sugar (so please arrive with urine in your bladder and be prepared to give a specimen), reviewing the course of your pregnancy, and discussing issues or problems as they arise.
You may bring your husband, partner, support person or other relative to your appointments. We welcome your bringing your children to appointments but ask that you try to not bring toddlers for the initial appointment with the nurse and for ultrasound appointments, as these may be fairly long and young children do get restless.
As physicians, we rotate our “on call” or delivery days and cannot promise that a specific physician will be present at your delivery. For this reason, we recommend that you meet and become familiar with each of the physicians during your pregnancy. Babies choose their own times to appear and therefore dictate our schedules! If you have an appointment with the on‑call physician and the physician is away from the office for hospital care, your appointment will be managed by the staff and the other office physicians.
Resource Nurse & Emergencies
Routine medical questions should be directed to our office between 8:00 to 4:00 Monday through Friday except for holidays. We have a Resource Nurse available by phone during those hours to answer questions and begin evaluation of problems. You may leave a voice message for her, but please be brief; she will call you back for details and further discussion. Please let the receptionist know if your call is of an emergent or urgent nature, and your call will be attended to as soon as possible. If you develop a problem that you feel requires urgent attention, it is important to call early in the day to talk with the Resource Nurse so that an appointment can be scheduled appropriately with a physician or the nurse practitioner as needed. If your question or problem is non-emergent, the Resource Nurse will return your call within a couple of hours, but please stay available by the phone to receive the call or let us know when we can reach you.
If urgent or emergent questions or problems arise outside of office hours, we always can be reached on a 24-hour basis through our answering service at 715-2441. Please indicate to the answering service the urgency of your call. If you do not get a return call shortly, it may be because we are taking care of another emergent problem, in surgery, or delivering a baby. In such cases if we have not gotten back to you within one hour, please call the answering service. In the case of emergencies, the Childbirth Center at St. Joseph Hospital, 738-6360 can also be called directly.
Ulstrasounds
You generally will have two formal ultrasounds, the first at or around the time of your first visit with the doctor and the second in mid-pregnancy at around 18 to 22 weeks. The first ultrasound will check your dates, look for the baby’s heart beat, and look at your uterus and ovaries. The second will be an anatomic screen for a full evaluation of the baby’s development. You may be able to find out the sex of the baby at the second ultrasound if you so wish. Additional ultrasounds will be performed only if there is a clear medical indication. Ultrasound examinations may be scheduled either in our office or at Bellingham Diagnostic Ultrasound Center (BDUC). You may also have a brief ultrasound at your first visit with the doctor to help confirm your pregnancy.
Friends & relatives will be able to observe the ultrasound procedure if the patient desires. Since the exam room is small, please limit. Visitors may be asked at any time during the procedure to return to the waiting room.
Employer/Medical Leave Forms
For all forms there is a $5 per page charge. It takes seven days to process the paperwork.
Our Expectations of You
Your pregnancy will progress optimally if you as the patient and we as the health care providers work as a team. To this end, we ask that you follow advice and instructions from the doctors, nurse midwife, and nurses; keep your appointments; have lab work done promptly; report problems promptly; and ask questions if you have concerns. Out of consideration to other patients, please be on time for your appointments and call as much in advance as possible to reschedule an appointment if you find you are unable to make it. We also ask that you keep address and phone number changes updated with the receptionists and let our bookkeepers know if your insurance changes so that we can reduce billing errors. If you have questions about fees or insurance please ask to talk with one of our bookkeepers. Thank you.
Patient Guidelines, Safe Medications
| Pregnancy Risk Line: health.utah.gov/prl (800) 822-2229 |
OTIS (Organization of Teratology Information Specialists): www.otispregnancy.org (866) 626-OTIS Monday–Friday: 7:00 AM–3:00 PM |