Interview 13- Antenatal Screening

Age at interview: 43

Brief Outline:

Healthy pregnancy after 2 miscarriages; following nuchal scan results they considered amniocentesis and decided against. Baby born healthy, although mother had obstetric cholestasis in late pregnancy.

Background:

Children: First baby, 7.5 months old, Occupation: Mother - charity worker, Father (age 45 at interview) - researcher for a charity, Marital status: Partnered.

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The written information was better in her current pregnancy than her first and the midwife discussed it carefully with her.

Yes, I mean I think, when I went for the scans this time, when I was pregnant this time, the information that we got sent before the scan actually was very good at telling you that. It said, you know, 'This is a serious, it's a serious medical proce-' - you know, not in those kind of words, but it was a serious medical procedure, that it wasn't there just for, there was a lot of things that could be found out and it wasn't always good news.  

And that was in the information that we were sent. And it was really good that that was included in the information. And it said things like, 'If you have other children it may be a good idea to have somebody else looking after, don't bring your children with you because it could be that you get bad news and do you want your children there?' 

And I felt that that was very positive that they dealt with it like that. I thought it was really helpful, really helpful information, very clear and actually my experience of finding I was pregnant that time and, and the first time was poles apart in terms of the kind of level of support and information I got.

So you had a session with the midwife?

So I had a session with the midwife. Now that might been because I'd had the early scan, so I knew at eight weeks that the baby was OK at that stage, but I saw the midwife immediately after I'd had that first, very early scan and she was...

Was that their, that was their invitation?

No, I made an appointment to go to the, to our GP and I saw the midwife then, and she was brilliant and just spent absolutely ages with me, going through a whole pack of information about all of the different options that, all of the different tests that would happen, what the processes were, getting information about me and medical history. 

It was much more what I thought my experience was going to be the first time. So it included information about where you could get the nuchal fold scan in that information.