Looking for an OBGYN who understands mental health & can work with my psychiatrist

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have bipolar and have been hospitalized for it and have gone through some serious pre and post partum episodes. My OB, Dr. Malcolm DeSouza, took my mental health very seriously and worked with my medication regime. He is a sole practioner and very compassionate. He takes major insurance.

Did you not have a surrogate like other families who know there is a genetic disposition? (CF for example's

Well obviously you're a moron. Surrogates don't change the genetics of the birth Mother if that's what you are suggesting.

But, also PP, being righteous about renting wombs when you clearly shouldn't reproduce at all is funny.

Not the PP but come again?

[Anonymous]

I'm also a patient at Foxhall, just delivered my second, and all the doctors there took my mental health issues seriously. And Dr Green was the on-call doctor during my postpartum hospital time and was the one who discharged me. I don't have bipolar disorder, but if you like Foxhall, I think you'll be well taken care of by the docs who do take insurance.

[Anonymous]

Think of it like this, you’re paying to try to prevent/mitigate any mental health issues. Uncontrolled mental health issues can completely wreck your life, for years. Pregnancy is so stressful it causes women who were previously completely healthy to sometimes develop psychosis.

Don’t be afraid, be proactive. If you have a solid care team, that you know has the experience to help catch and manage whatever might come up, it will also help reduce your anxiety which will help prevent an episode.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have bipolar and have been hospitalized for it and have gone through some serious pre and post partum episodes. My OB, Dr. Malcolm DeSouza, took my mental health very seriously and worked with my medication regime. He is a sole practioner and very compassionate. He takes major insurance.

Did you not have a surrogate like other families who know there is a genetic disposition? (CF for example's

Poster, would you care to post your "fit to breed" papers? Has your family tree been cleared for 3 generations?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Think of it like this, you’re paying to try to prevent/mitigate any mental health issues. Uncontrolled mental health issues can completely wreck your life, for years. Pregnancy is so stressful it causes women who were previously completely healthy to sometimes develop psychosis.

Don’t be afraid, be proactive. If you have a solid care team, that you know has the experience to help catch and manage whatever might come up, it will also help reduce your anxiety which will help prevent an episode.

Yes but here’s the thing. Op doesn’t realize the marathon starts not with pregnancy, but the birth. I have mental health issues and did fine during pregnancy - both of them. It was a difficult and insanely painful birth, lasting and permanent physical changes to my body for the worse (yes, I said it - I will never not hate the changes pregnancy and birth has on my body despite loving my kids), sleep deprivation, a very difficult baby, the loss of my identity as a woman who had free time for myself and very little responsibilities pre-kids beyond work and basic adulting, and difficulty adjusting to the never ending demands of being a parent and trying to figure out how to be married to my husband while being co-parents and managing one and now two children 24-7 when we were both raised quite differently and didn’t realize that we had very different ideas about parenting until our kids arrived and we were faced with the millions of daily decisions parents have to make - it was all those things that threw me into a mental tailspin.

Throwing money at an OB is not the best way to plan for this, OP. You need a solid postpartum and during birth support plan. That means making sure you get pain meds during birth (which reduces likelihood of birth trauma and postpartum mood disorders), considering and planning for the best mode of delivery (for some people like trauma survivors this may mean a scheduled C section) given your own unique circumstances, a therapist you work with during pregnancy and can keep seeing postpartum, having a postpartum support group lined up, having a plan to support you and your partner immediately during and after the delivery and in the first few months of parenthood.

Services like grocery delivery, housekeeping services, night nurses, lactation consultants, family help or hiring a postpartum doula, planning with your partner for feeding that maximizes your sleep (hint: do formula, as someone who night nursed exclusively it severely compromised my mental health until my kids started STTN and I don’t care what anyone says, formula is slower to digest and will give you longer night stretches than breastmilk), lining up a perinatal psychiatrist and psychologist, planning your postpartum contraception, etc. are all things you can do to stack the deck in your favor.

No one told me pregnancy was the easy part but for many people, it is. The marathon starts when the baby arrives, unless your child arrives as a magic and perfect unicorn baby. Not saying this to scare you but because I wish someone had told me and I wasn’t prepared to be stretched to the limits of my ability to cope to give birth and mother my children. Put more emphasis on the postpartum part of this, and know that your OB is gonna refer you out for any issues that go beyond basic things and will not be the provider to rely on the way you think they are. (For example, in postpartum I saw a perinatal
Psychiatrist, psychologist, licensed social worker, lactation consultant, ENT for feeding issues, pediatrician, and urogynecologist and pelvic floor PT).

[Anonymous]

Another idea is to add in a reproductive psychiatrist to your providers. Hopkins has a reproductive mental health clinic. I got in with them just before becoming pregnant due to my history of PPD. They are going to follow me through pregnancy and will communicate with my OB.

[Anonymous]

5 trimesters clinic at GW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Think of it like this, you’re paying to try to prevent/mitigate any mental health issues. Uncontrolled mental health issues can completely wreck your life, for years. Pregnancy is so stressful it causes women who were previously completely healthy to sometimes develop psychosis.

Don’t be afraid, be proactive. If you have a solid care team, that you know has the experience to help catch and manage whatever might come up, it will also help reduce your anxiety which will help prevent an episode.

Yes but here’s the thing. Op doesn’t realize the marathon starts not with pregnancy, but the birth. I have mental health issues and did fine during pregnancy - both of them. It was a difficult and insanely painful birth, lasting and permanent physical changes to my body for the worse (yes, I said it - I will never not hate the changes pregnancy and birth has on my body despite loving my kids), sleep deprivation, a very difficult baby, the loss of my identity as a woman who had free time for myself and very little responsibilities pre-kids beyond work and basic adulting, and difficulty adjusting to the never ending demands of being a parent and trying to figure out how to be married to my husband while being co-parents and managing one and now two children 24-7 when we were both raised quite differently and didn’t realize that we had very different ideas about parenting until our kids arrived and we were faced with the millions of daily decisions parents have to make - it was all those things that threw me into a mental tailspin.

Throwing money at an OB is not the best way to plan for this, OP. You need a solid postpartum and during birth support plan. That means making sure you get pain meds during birth (which reduces likelihood of birth trauma and postpartum mood disorders), considering and planning for the best mode of delivery (for some people like trauma survivors this may mean a scheduled C section) given your own unique circumstances, a therapist you work with during pregnancy and can keep seeing postpartum, having a postpartum support group lined up, having a plan to support you and your partner immediately during and after the delivery and in the first few months of parenthood.

Services like grocery delivery, housekeeping services, night nurses, lactation consultants, family help or hiring a postpartum doula, planning with your partner for feeding that maximizes your sleep (hint: do formula, as someone who night nursed exclusively it severely compromised my mental health until my kids started STTN and I don’t care what anyone says, formula is slower to digest and will give you longer night stretches than breastmilk), lining up a perinatal psychiatrist and psychologist, planning your postpartum contraception, etc. are all things you can do to stack the deck in your favor.

No one told me pregnancy was the easy part but for many people, it is. The marathon starts when the baby arrives, unless your child arrives as a magic and perfect unicorn baby. Not saying this to scare you but because I wish someone had told me and I wasn’t prepared to be stretched to the limits of my ability to cope to give birth and mother my children. Put more emphasis on the postpartum part of this, and know that your OB is gonna refer you out for any issues that go beyond basic things and will not be the provider to rely on the way you think they are. (For example, in postpartum I saw a perinatal
Psychiatrist, psychologist, licensed social worker, lactation consultant, ENT for feeding issues, pediatrician, and urogynecologist and pelvic floor PT).

I'm glad you had good prenatal care, many of us did not. It takes me a good hour to discuss all the crappy things my reproductive endocrinologist, high risk OB #1, midwives, high risk OB #2 did to me. Repeated trauma over months

[Anonymous]

I have mental health issues but got through pregnancy and post partum totally intact and have remained so ever since. I did pay put of pocket for a psychiatry practice that specialized in women, particularly during pregnancy and reproductive years. All this to say, you may get through this without a hitch, op, but agree with a pp to be as prepared as you can post partum and try to get as much help and sleep as possible.