Discovering you are pregnant, whether planned or unplanned is an experience no woman can forget. I remember running down the corridor in my house shouting ‘I think I am pregnant’.... I have read stories of women who have wrapped up the positive pregnancy test and given it to their partners as a gift. A gesture that I would have loved to have done myself but unfortunately i don’t possess such patience.

Both my pregnancies were planned, unfortunately i lost my first baby at about 7 weeks. Anyone who has been in this position, which I am sure is many women out there will understand the insensitive comments of ‘well its better now than later when you’re really attached’, or ‘it obviously wasn’t meant to be’. I know people mean well but its no consolation when you have lost part of you, a child that you were already attached to and in love with.

Whilst writing this I realise how far I have progressed in a year, mainly due to the support from my new partner. Until this day though I am still affected by the way I was treated by my local hospital. I was admitted for an early scan as I was suffering severe abdominal pain. The scan proved inconclusive and I had a series of HCG blood tests to determine if my hormone levels were rising at the expected rate. At this point they were concerned I was having an ectopic pregnancy. I will never forget how I was told that I was going to lose my baby. It was a Friday afternoon and I was at home and the phone rang, this is what the consultant said to me ‘After looking at your file, I can conclude that I don’t think you’re having an ectopic pregnancy, however I think it is likely that you have miscarried or will miscarry in the next few weeks’.....

That was it, as simple as that. The consultant obviously deals with women on a daily basis who have lost their babies, why am i special to deserve any understanding or sympathy, I am purely a name. A few weeks later I was admitted for a D&C after more severe abdominal cramping. I had no support, no counselling, that was it. I went home and had to begin the slow process of recovering physically and mentally.

I wasn’t prepared for the emptiness I would feel after losing my baby and lack of understanding by friends, family and especially the medical profession. Friends became none existent, to this day i don’t know why they deserted me when i really needed them, I guess its times like this when you find out who your true friends are. My family were understanding to a point, then as weeks and months passed i think they expected me to snap out of it. At this point i felt so isolated that i became severely depressed.

My relationship with my partner drifted due to my depression and his inability to talk to me about what had happened. Eventually we separated and I vowed never to expose myself to such pain again even if it meant never having children.

‘Time is a great healer’, I always thought that this statement was a comment someone said to you when they didn’t know what else to say. In some cases I guess that’s true but i have realised that time does help. I am very fortunate to now be with a man who understands everything about me, with his help I have overcome the depression and I have never been happier. Without the love and support he has given me there is no way I would be sat here 8 months pregnant writing this article.

When I found out I was pregnant again my initial elation was marred somewhat by my previous miscarriage. Every week was a hurdle and passing that 7 week marker was a turning point and I started to relax. My main apprehension was now reserved for my local hospital and my first scan. My partner was well aware of my previous treatment within my hospital and promised he’d be there to support me throughout, reassuring me that it would be better this time. How wrong could he be??

It was a complete disaster. The saga commences with the sonographer (aka Miss Trunchbull from Matilda). I knew things were not off to a great start when it was obvious she was very old school, matronly and a no-nonsense woman, she unsympathetically placed unnecessary pressure on my abdomen to try and get the baby to move so she could date the baby. The baby would not move and i was ordered to jump up and down in a variety of committable positions. It did make me giggle though as the baby eventually turned its back on her as if to say ‘leave me alone, I’m sleeping’. It was shortly after this that she gave up inflicting intense torture methods on my body (thanks baby! I owe you one) and told me to wait in the reception for my results.

This is when i finally lost it with my local hospital. We sat waiting for about twenty minutes (with my throbbing abdomen) until the Trunchbull took me into a room, my partner had just gone to the toilet. Whilst I was on my own she informed me that there might be a problem with the baby and she wanted the consultant to come and talk to me. My partner was completely bemused when he returned from the toilet to find me in a side room in floods of tears. Trunchbull refused to tell us anything else, it had to come from the consultant.

We were kept waiting for over an hour, possibly one of the most anxious hours of my life imagining a variety of serious illness my baby could have, when the most obnoxious consultant i have had the displeasure of meeting in my life graced us with her presence.

In her condescending officious tone, she informed us of a thickening on the babies neck, which might be nothing and we should come back next week so they can complete another scan and if the thickening is still there they will perform an amniocentesis. Hold on a minute... How did we go from slight thickening to amniocentesis without any explanation, she was about to usher us out of the room when i turned, i could not contain my anger with the hospital any longer and 12 months of pain hurtled out of my mouth! I was so proud i didn’t cry and manage to stand up to this woman, I demanded to know what illness are indicative of a thickened neck, and how dare they keep us waiting for over an hour in complete anxiety to offer such a lame explanation. She was rather taken aback (at this point the Trunchbull scuttled out of the room) and explained in a snotty tone, that she was just getting to that and discussed the possible chromosomal problems that our baby might have, such as Down’s Syndrome. As we make a shocked departure from the hospital I vowed never to set foot in there for as long as I lived.

Luckily we were in a financial position to have a nuchal scan undertaken privately and complementing blood tests, which concluded i had a 1 in 3000 chance of having a baby with Down’s syndrome. We had a wonderful consultant and we had the results with 36 hours of attending his clinic. He assured me on no terms did i need an amniocentesis and to ignore any medical practitioner who said otherwise. This news was such a relief especially after the doomsday prognosis our local hospital had given us.

It was my great pleasure to call the hospital up to tell them i would not be coming for my next scan with them, that I had undergone a nuchal scan privately and my risk was minimal and he advised against any further investigation. Yet again the hospital failed to surprise me, the Trunchbull commented ‘well you could still be that 1 in 3000, so i would consider a aminocentisis’. WHAT!! I sharply informed her i would take the consultants opinion over hers, any anyone with a shred of a mathematical knowledge would know what 1 in 3000 risk far outweighs the 1 in 200 risk of miscarriage from an amniocentesis. To this day i still think my hospital have some annual amniocentesis quota to fulfill, however baby and I had no intention of helping them meet their targets.

From my experience there are stark contrasts between the quality of antenatal care women receive in different centers. I am now under a consultant under in a different hospital for my final few months and there is no comparison to the other hospital i attended, even though they are in the same Partnership. The staff are friendly and have made me feel completely at ease in this hospital. Although, I have been unlucky to receive poor antenatal care, I am aware that this is not common practice and I am sure some women will probably praise the hospital that I won’t set foot into. My only advice to women is to question everything the specialists say to you, they are not God and they don’t know everything. At the end of the day its your body and your baby, don’t allow yourself to be bullied into a procedure that isn’t completely necessary. If you’re still not happy then ask to see another midwife/consultant for a second opinion.