I went in for my nuchal translucency scan today and even before we got out of the car I was pissed off when I realised we had to pay for parking. Pay for bloody parking?! Pay, as in I was taking a leisurely walk around the shops or something, but I wasn't. I was actually attending an essential hospital appointment. Visitors, fine. Patients paying for parking for day appointments? Tax paying patients paying for parking for day appointments?! What a joke.
Muttering to myself all the way to the Maternity and Gynaecology Unit we walk in and eventually find our way to the Antenatal Scan Unit.
Walking in, I feel like I've time travelled back to the 90's. It's clean, but very dated and cluttered. No pride. Everything attached to the walls with sellotape in a haphazard fashion.
We go to the reception and she flicks through my booklet and asks for a specific form which I tell her is actually in the booklet. She finds it and then very loudly asks if I'm here for the "Downs Syndrome Test" which immediately offends me.
It's not called the downs syndrome test. The test is for other conditions besides downs syndrome and in fact downs syndrome is the least fatal of them. Plus, my baby still might have a syndrome and I resent it being implied that downs is the worst thing that can happen when it isn't.
I've been looking at kiddies with downs and they are much more widely recognised within society and mostly live very normal lives for people with sometimes severe mental and physical disabilities.
Then you've got the poor kiddies who get edwards syndrome or patau syndrome or one of the others trisomy defects and they are born to die, if they make it that far. Not worth mentioning apparently.
And anyway, why assume we're all so thick that we don't know what a bloody nuchal scan is when that is what we're there for?!
What a cow.
Sitting down waiting, James goes and fetches me drinks to help along my full bladder. It comes out of a dispenser but its clearly tap water - it tastes like bleach. I like my water at least filtered if you don't mind, I knew I should have brought in my Evian. I studied Geology and Environmental Sciences - I know where tap water has been!
The other couples that come in are the typical mix required to make the world go round - kids having kids, Polish, women with their mums, young ethic girls with older white gentlemen, women on their own. All looking a little awkward, except one lady who was more my type and chatting away to her husband about her birthing plan. I learned something quite handy really from listening in, something about them having to provide hand held heart rate checking devices and last time them checking her manually every 20 mins rather than strapping her up to a machine on the bed.
As we sat there I noticed a sign stating to ask if you want an ultrasound photo which seemed odd because I couldn't understand who would not want one.
We were finally called in and the lady was really old but seemed nice enough and I got on the bed and got my gut out. I always remember ladies stating how surprised how low down they do abdominal scans and this has caused me to be surprised at how high up they do them on me because it was only about an inch below my belly button.
There was an almighty fart as she squeeze out the gel and I could feel it spray everywhere *sigh* but not as cold as expected either.
The monitor was high up on the wall about 6 foot away but big enough to see clearly, but I could probably have done with my glasses on really.
I thought it was bad yesterday but today the baby was dead for ages. I'm so glad that I saw it only yesterday because that kept me going while we waited and waited. She did say that the baby moved but I didn't really see it so I was just looking out for the heartbeat but even when she had the baby in the usual length ways cross section and slowly panned through the baby neither me nor James could see a heartbeat. Back and forth she went again and again and nothing.
I wasn't freaking out, I was thinking more along the lines of how crap this stone age equipment was and with granny at the machine too and I was getting a bit irritated to be honest.
Eventually she stopped and proudly stated that the heartbeat was there and squinting I could just about make it out, but baby wasn't happy either and he started bucking away so she lost it and decided to attempt the measurement and nuchal reading instead.
He measured... wait for it... 68mm(!) compared to 62mm yesterday and that put him at 13w. That is what it says on my notes anyway even though the monitor said 13+1.
My telling her that I had IVF and the most accurate date possible is 12+4 and it isn't dependant on her measurements clearly went in one ear and out of the other.
Then it was time to measure the nuchal fold and she managed to sneak in a measurement of 1.1mm before baby had enough and began to violently protest.
There seemed to be much less fluid in there with him today and the walls of the uterus seemed to be closing in on him (maybe due to full bladder but the lady said uterine contraction???) and he started bucking away. He wasn't having any of it. Every time she got close to finding his neck he'd buck and twist and I actually started to feel a bit concerned... It seemed like distress.
To be honest I was worrying about two scans in as many days so that was playing on my mind and now baby was really giving it some. I just wanted to go and pee asap incase the full bladder was squishing him.
That might sound ridiculous but James felt the same. Did you know that pregnant women can pee anywhere, anytime because they should not hold their pee?
Anyway, so the lady was trying and trying for ages and was getting a bit frustrated until she finally grabbed another measurement from thin air and announced she was done.
We said we'd like a photograph so she quickly took one and put it into a folder and handed it over - "£4 please".
..............
I had exactly £4 in my purse and I really had to suck in the pregnancy hormones because a large part of me wanted to have a tantrum but I think ultimately I was too outraged to react and also really wanted to empty my bladder for baby.
Looking in the wallet it is literally the same photo, twice.
Back into the waiting room, waiting to have blood taken for the second part of the assessment, we noticed a broken machine offering stamps at £4 each to be exchanged for ultrasound photos.
I didn't feel like I was waiting too long, maybe 20 mins, when I was called in by a nurse who turned out to be very competent at getting my veins to play nice. I phased out for a little while, I'm not going to gawk at the giant needle going in, so she asked if I was feeling ok.
I replied I was just relieved to know where the nearest defibrillator was, as explained in the signs on the wall opposite me.
She then got my booklet out and informed me of my new EDD of 15th January, which I immediately disregarded, and she showed me my babies growth chart which showed him to be slap bang on target... for 13 weeks -_-
They know the age of the baby exactly, he is 12+4 without question and therefore you'd think they'd use the information that he was measuring at 13+0 to highlight that he is currently above average in size (according to their machine anyway because he was just 1 day ahead yesterday). I doubt that it has any significance, but it is accurate. Using the sonographers measurement, which they are the first people to suggest is not perfect, and using it to classify my baby as perfectly average when he isn't seems stupid. Yes, it is. It's bloody stupid.
She then told me that if I didn't hear from them that I'd eventually get a letter through telling me everything was ok but if they phoned then the results needed to be discussed, but my nuchal reading was apparently 1.5mm when the abnormal cut off is 3.5mm so that looks very promising.
I've done a lot of soul searching about the whole chromosomally abnormal baby thing, in fact I'd done it before we'd gotten pregnant because to be honest when things were looking rosy we weren't 100% sure about how we'd deal with the situation if you know what I mean. Now, however, we'd definitely be grateful for whatever we were given and you even wonder sometimes if all the crap you have to endure is to force you into such a situation that completes you even though it would have at one time destroyed you, so I had been suspecting that I might have been destined to have a handicapped child.
I don't know if that seems really bazaar, but I was more surprised than I anticipated that the nuchal reading was normal. Life hasn't been normal for so long.
Oh! Actually I just remembered that I really shit James up earlier too. He was waiting outside during the bloods because he's a wuss and he'd missed the whole conversation before she called him in and she left to get something. I'd previously told him the nuchal reading needed to be less than 2.5mm so as he walked in, I said "oh, it wasn't what I said earlier, it was 3.5mm" and he went a bit of a grey colour and I continued by saying "so it's even better" to which he looked confused.
He thought that I meant the 1.1mm reading from earlier was actually 3.5mm so well over the 2.5mm! Oops.
All in all, I do think the whole Nhs hospital setting is something I'm going to have to get my head around but it wasn't as dirty as I thought it might be and I do have higher hopes of the midwives being a bit more personable.
I've got my 20 weeks scan booked for the 27th August and I'm glad it's ages away!
Still not heard the baby's heartbeat or got a reading so I'm going to borrow SILs doppler and hopefully it'll be a good one and give a reading too. It looked so slow today.
Here is the photo of baby. You can see how cramped he looks! I am charging 20p per view to cover the incurred expenses :P
Love reading your blog Lou! Glad all is well x
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