Selective Reduction Appointment

In January 2014, we went to our first appointment with the MFM specialist we were referred too.  Upon entrance to his office for this stressful appointment, he seemed very rushed with us.  Even with the abruptness of the MFM, we tried to keep an open mind though we were both scared and faced with a lot of hard decisions in a pregnancy again.  The MFM doctor very strongly pressed the issue of selective reduction for two to three of the fetuses.  Selective reduction has a high risk of terminating them all though accidentally.  He also explained how he does not do “old-school” methods such as cerclage and only performs proven methods that work.  He said if we choose to keep all of the quintuplets, he could handle the high risk case, our goal would be to make it to 27-28 (the national average), a large team could be quickly called in if an emergency c-section needed to occur, interventions would be done prior to twenty-four weeks (since this pregnancy is shorter than a singleton’s pregnancy), and I would be closely monitored by him.  We left the appointment talking about all options and decided we would progress with the pregnancy.  Due to not feeling completely confident in his attitude or abilities, we spent days analyzing HOM maternal fetal medicine doctors on the East Coast.  We really liked Dr. Elliott but wanted to stay together as a family during this physically and emotionally difficult pregnancy.  After much research, we decided the referral MFM credentials seemed to be the best choice for the East Coast.
            We went to every three to four week appointment with the practice.  However, we only saw the referred  MFM doctor at one of those appointments.  We saw his partner at the other appointments.  They did vital checks, ultrasounds, and a brief doctor visit at each appointment.  Things seemed to be progressing in the pregnancy.  However, I was having issues gaining weight (I suffered from occasional nausea but rarely threw up). I asked to speak with a nutritionist or get counseled on how many calories, special diet, etc I needed to support this pregnancy.  I was never given this information.  I was skeptical of the care but kept going since we felt “trapped”.  Most doctors will not take on a quintuplet pregnancy.