Centering Pregnancy/pregnancy support

lansingteacherbride

So at my 1st OB visit I was told about a new thing in their practice. You can have traditional care or this "centering" pregnancy approach. You would meet with a provider ( midwife or nurse practitioner)  with a group around your due date. You would have an exam separately and then talk as a group about nutrition symptoms etc.  You would still have other visits with your OB.  I see some pros and cons.Pro it's at night so I wouldn't need to take as much time off work. Con it's2 hours. Pro It would be nice to talk to other pregnant ladies in real life. Con there is a pregnancy WORKBOOK (I did not anticipate repeating the 3rd grade @43).  Has anyone done this approach before what did you think?

thankfully

My MW practice has been doing this since my first pregnancy back in 2010 (we were the first group). There are two group appts, one when you hit 3rd tri so around 27 weeks, we do glucose tolerance as a group and discuss a bunch of other stuff, then anouther around 35. This practice is primarily for HB so a lot of the content is geared toward that. It was great as a ftm being in a like minded group with some experienced women. Now I'm the experienced one so I field questions. We didn't have a workbook. It has been a positive experience for me. 

jc_twomamas

@lansingteacherbride Guessing by your user name, we're in the same area of MI and likely the same practice! How crazy. Anyways, my OB talked to
me about it two weeks ago and although it sounds appealing, I felt it was geared towards was having less interaction time with your doctors and counting those meetings/visits as appointments since they sync up with "12 weeks, 16 weeks, 20 weeks..." ect. Maybe I understood it wrong! Either way, I can't do it since I'm high risk but I never see the hurt in having support from other pregnant women! I'd be interested to know more detials. I love my practice and all of the OB's/NP's there but I know how insanely busy they are! I wonder if they're doing it to get "more bang for your buck" per-say. 

lansingteacherbride

I was surprised it was even an option.  I'm 43 so that's a factor also.

MrsW524

They offer this through the hospital near me.  It seems like an interesting option, but as a FTM I want the more one on one experience of a traditional care experience with my midwife.

jc_twomamas

@lansingteacherbride I was too. I had my son with the same practice in April of 2015 and it wasn't an option then. I know even since I had my son they've grown so maybe it's a way to help with the amount of patients? Maybe I'm reading into it all wrong but that is how it felt to me.

brij2006

I did this with DD's pregnancy and absolutely loved it!  All of us girls got pretty close and we still keep in touch now that our kiddos are almost 2. That was a big plus.

I'm due June 3rd and the June centering meetings don't work as well with my work schedule, but the May ones do.  So I'll likely try to hop into theirs instead of doing the regular midwife appointments.

brij2006

Adding: I actually really enjoyed it because I was a FTM and many of the women had questions I hadn't even thought about yet or had forgot about to ask at my appointment.  So it was really nice to hear other questions and then recommendations on how to handle it or what has worked for others.
I swear one of the girls' recommendations to handle heartburn in the last trimester was the only way I made it through without constantly throwing up.