Saving Women's Lives with Early Ultrasounds During Pregnancy

I don't know why most OBGYN's don't see their pregnant patients until they're at least 8 weeks along or more. I figure it's standard practice but to me it just seems like laziness, not to mention risky.

Why is it risky or lazy you ask? Well, because of the risk of things going wrong, such as an ectopic pregnancy . Ectopic pregnancies are the number 1 killer in pregnancy in the 1st trimester . Accounting for up to 15% of all maternal deaths. That's scary, isn't it? Something so natural as pregnancy could literally kill you. Ectopic pregnancies can happen to literally any woman regardless of age or whether she's high risk or not.

When I was pregnant with my first, I didn't even get seen by an OBGYN until I was 17 weeks along. I was 18 then. Thank god I didn't have an ectopic. With my youngest they didn't get me in until I was 9 weeks along. 9 weeks! I would have been dead by then if I had an ectopic and didn't even know about it . Not everyone lives near a hospital and if you have an ectopic and you rupture , you have minutes to save your life . That's how serious they are . I think about my friends who live in rural areas that are 30 minutes or more away from the nearest hospital and it stresses me out. My god what if that happened to them? They wouldn't make it in time.

When I got diagnosed with an ectopic, I never had one before. I wasn't high risk, it just randomly happened.

I think it should become the standard, the norm to where women have the option to be seen by an OBGYN as soon as they find out they're pregnant. They should be able to get an ultrasound that day to make sure things are in the right place and to rule out an ectopic . It should be the standard to be able to get an ultrasound at 4 or 5 weeks . Just imagine how many womens' fallopian tubes we could save if they could get seen sooner? Or even their lives? They could get treated promptly and much sooner. Why isn't this a thing? I'm so frustrated by the health care system. You would think living in the United States, our healthcare would be amazing, but it's not. It most certainly does need some work . Especially when it comes to women's health. There's so much lax when it comes to treating women regardless of if they're pregnant or not, it baffles me. I've heard of so many stories where women have complained about pain and knew their bodies and knew something was terribly wrong and they were just passed off, dismissed like they were stupid and that the issue was something minor, only to be in the ER hours later nearly dying. I can remember when I had my second son and I was 4 days from my due date and I KNEW i was in labor . I knew it was happening and they discharged me and said I wasn't . I left that hospital so pissed off and ended up right back at the hospital within 30 minutes!

We need to do better, we must do better. Women's health matters. Imagine if you will if someone you loved was newly pregnant and had an ectopic and wouldn't get seen til they were 8 weeks along or more? They could die without that early detection of an ectopic pregnancy. It is imperative that we change the standard to having all women have the option to get a free ultrasound done as soon as they find out they are pregnant so that they can at least check the placement. So many lives could be saved if we just check it out sooner rather than later.