03-10-2008 - 20 week 5 day scan

My mood while writing this blog: happy, emotional, tired!!

So here I am once again, reporting on my latest ultrasound scan.. Amazing how the time is passing lately!

Our beautiful little baby looked healthy and well today, Thank Goodness!! The one sticking point was that the sonographer couldn't get the clearest view of the heart, even after getting me to walk around and drink water so he told me I need to come back for another scan just to complete the process. It's a shame really because we were hoping to get that long awaited 'all clear' before hubby goes away for almost a month. As it is I will have to go back alone in 3 weeks. Never-the-less I'll be happy to go back and check on things, just to be sure. Hopefully baby will comply next time!

It's amazing how much the baby has grown since 16 weeks! He/she looked huge in comparison and this time I had the pleasure of feeling the kicks I could see on the screen! I'm just so happy that everything looked great and am just praying that our little one's heart will also be well.. I'm taking some comfort from the fact that everytime i have listened to the heartbeat using the doppler the heartbeat has been a strong 140 bpm which I know is about right. I hope that means it is working well.

The scan today was different to the others in that we didn't have our consultant. It's a shame because the man doing the scan had very poor bed-side manner.. He didn't talk to us/tell us what he was checking at all.. even when I tried to ask. It was quite an anxious time watching him try to look at the heart.. he furrowed his brow and sighed which made us really worry.. All he needed to say was that he couldn't get a good view. He wasn't very sympathetic when we seemed worried at the end and pretty much told us we should 'get over it'. Not very nice really...

So after the scan we went to the receptionist to book the new appointment as we were told. This is where we encountered one of the rudest women ever.. After making us wait for ages, her first words were "what do you want?". This got my back up big time and only got worse when we were made to feel we had to justify the extra scan... I think it would take too long to write everything that happened but it was really annoying and we were made to feel like we were asking the earth...

The final straw came when I asked to speak to a midwife. I had called on friday and was told by the midwife on duty that it would be absolutely fine. Unfortunately the woman we saw was also very rude and short with us. She didn't introduce herself and was quite dismissing.. I needed to talk to her about my rhesus -ve status, enquire about getting tested for Strep B and also wanted to know if she could check my cervix just to reassure me that all looked well and as it should.. She answered my first two questions fine and I reckon she could have handled my last one better. She tried to just fob me off but eventually got the senior midwife in because I was getting a bit wound up. That midwife was better and explained that it wasn't something they could do but that I could certainly make an appointment to see my consultant to talk it through.. I don't know why but I got very emotional at the end of the meeting and unfortunately started crying. My husband was pretty wound up by this stage and had been biting his tongue throughout all this frustration but eventually just blurted out about the poor treatment we had had. I think it all just got a bit much for both of us.

So, where do we stand now?

I'm having a scan on the 23rd October to check baby's heart.

I could contact my consultant and book an appointment but for now have decided not to. All I wanted was reassurance; I've had no symptoms or signs of anything being wrong so I've decided not to pursue the cervix check for now. I guess I'm getting to the stage of knowing baby is ok and now starting to worry about my body not putting that in jeopardy.

So, all in all we're delighted that our baby is still looking well but were disappointed that some insensitive people were able to make the experience more stressful than it had to be - but I'll get over that!!

I'm putting up some scan pictures to share!

Hope everyone is well xoxo