Private ultrasound to ease anxiety, also midwife at Kaiser
Hi everyone,
I am currently 13 weeks pregnant, FTM. We are insured with Kaiser and just had an ultrasound. The next one isn't until 20 weeks.
I am wondering if anyone had good experience with a place that offers private 3D ultrasounds around 14-16 weeks? Is it worth it? We had a MMC last summer and are just incredibly anxious. I don't want to buy a home doppler, so I thought it would be nice to have another opportunity to see our baby.
Also, we are looking at hiring a midwife for extra support for prenatal visits + postnatal care. We would be giving birth in the hospital. Kaiser doesn't seem to be allowing privately hired midwifes. Any recommendations? Anyone did something similar?
Thanks!
Feb 3, 2022
Parent Replies
How often are your regular obgyn appointments? Do you have one before 20 weeks? If so, I found my Kaiser obgyn (Oakland) would just do a quick check with the doppler or the ultrasound to show me everything looks good at every appointment even though I wasn't scheduled for an ultrasound. Though I now can't recall if that was only later in the pregnancy.
Kaiser's plan is midwife-led care for labor and delivery, so I can see why they wouldn't allow a privately hired midwife since they have their own. For what it's worth, though I was a little nervous because I hadn't met them beforehand, I LOVED the midwives on my care team, both the one I had for labor and especially the postpartum one. You could look into hiring a doula for your needs, which Kaiser does allow and would provide you a lot of the support you're looking for.
Congratulations! I can imagine this must be a time of many emotions.
My youngest daughter was born after a MMC in my previous pregnancy and I can understand the anxiety and wanting another scan. We did get an ultrasound outside of Kaiser at 16 weeks and honestly I'm so glad we did. It really helped with my anxiety afterwards, enough so that we then felt comfortable announcing our pregnancy to our extended community. I'm not sure who your Kaiser doctor is, but it may be worth asking for ultrasounds at your appointments, too. My doctor knew our history and was happy to let us take a peek when we were in.
As for the midwife question -- both of my daughters were born at Kaiser Oakland and we had really great experiences with the midwives they have on staff. For my second birth, we never even saw a doctor and the midwife handled everything and made me feel very well taken care of (in addition to the wonderful nurses!). Just to suggest that you may find you don't need to hire an outside person, in our experience the midwives and nurses in Oakland are great.
I wish you the best for the rest of your pregnancy!
Hi! Not sure if this is exactly what you’re looking for but with my first pregnancy I worked with a private home birth midwife and she recommended a private ultrasound tech - Link here
The only downside is he’s in San Jose !
Not sure what exactly you want to diagnose, but we used this one https://www.atfirstglanceultrasound.com/ in El Cerrito. Its goal is more about "baby pictures", its not a medical facility.
If you want to do something medical, consider self pay at alta bates or ucsf ultrasound.
Or just ask Kaiser for more frequent ultrasounds due to prior experience, not sure how accommodating they are, but they would probably put you in the high risk pregnancy category and would be more willing to do so.
You can also rent an ultrasound machine, of course, if you're not an ultrasound tech, that's probably in the bad idea area, but its an option.