Whilst these are obviously fantastic, and the baby is healthy, it was a tad disappointing.
As you may recall, last time we paid for a private scan. This one was on the NHS. We turned up at reception and the woman there was quite friendly (in amongst taking an obscene amount of money for each photo).
Then we were called by a foreign woman who took us to the scan room.
"Is this the first time you've been here" she grunted. We replied yes. She followed up with "is this your first baby?" with no emotion. Again, we said yes.
Lu laid down on the couch and she went to work silently. She didn't even describe what we were seeing. One minute you're looking at the head, and before you can comprehend it, she's moved away and is looking at the feet. Then she's checking out the spine. Then checking the skull. You are desperately trying to keep up with her.
"Do you want to know the sex?" is the next thing she says. No, we reply. More silence.
Then she zooms in for a detailed look at the heart. It all seems OK, it's beating away and you can see two chambers... I think that's right. But you're not a trained sonographer! Then she changes the image so that you can see the blood moving, with fresh and oxygenated blood and used and blue blood swilling around. Should they be mixing like that? Is that normal?
No word from the lady.
She zooms back out again and looks around again. The spine looks OK, but is it too curved? I don't know!
Suddenly she removes the scanning device, says "all is fine" in a low voice and gets up and walks away. I check my watch, it's 12.28pm and the scan started at 12.20pm. The whole time she's said only four or five sentences to us. We're left there as she writes something at her desk then hands Lucie her notes back. Somebody knocks on the door. "Come in" she says. A nurse walks in saying that the previous person wasn't given their notes back. A short conversation ensues where she denies this before they both leave the room.
We remain there, motionless. Are we still meant to be there? A couple of minutes later she walks back in, and looks surprised that we're still sat there.
"Did I give you back your notes and your photos?" she asks. We reply yes. "Well, all is well and the baby is healthy. Good luck for the rest of the pregnancy"... and she sits back down at her desk with her back to us.
Nice to see that customer service isn't dead!
anagrammatical
ReplyDeleteto your heart query - yes it is normal for the blood to mix like that in the heart. this is because the baby's lungs are obviously not open and babies have a hole in their heart to allow blood to shunt through. it closes at birth. In any case i'm not sure if you were seeing oxygenated or deoxygenated blood - an ultrasound scanner would be more likely doing a doppler analysis rather than any kind of blood oxygen analysis (I think - people correct me if i'm wrong) so you're probably seeing the different speeds of blood flow in the heart rather than different oxygen levels.
Ding!
anagrammatical
ReplyDeleteyou probably knew that anyway from your previous scans and what with, you know, Lucy actually being pregnant adn all but I thought I'd apply one fo the few pathetic pieces of information we're taught in preclinical that we can actually apply to a real life situation here......
PS the NHS is shit, we all know this.
See, you explained a lot more than she did! Should have taken you along with us.
ReplyDeleteitcomesinpints
ReplyDeleteShame the lady wasn't too nice but I'm really glad to hear The Pip is ok =)
Good luck jobhunting/finding somewhere to live, I don't think you're mad at all, juts doing what you think is right for you and your family. Keep us updated!