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Antenatal Screening

People's stories

Ending an affected pregnancy

Interview AN32

Interview AN32

Age at Interview: 35
Background: Children: first pregnancy ended at 15 weeks, Occupation: Florist, Marital status: Living with partner.

Brief outline:Problems detected in first pregnancy at routine 12 week dating scan - confirmed as Edward's syndrome by CVS. Couple decided to end the pregnancy. Now pregnant again.

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She had no idea the 12-week dating scan could detect problems, and felt completely unprepared for the possibility of bad news in her first pregnancy.
Print As far as I can remember we had no discussion at all, but I personally felt that I wouldn't go for any screening barring a scan. I had no blood tests or - yeah, but we hadn't entered any discussion. It hadn't entered our minds that anything would be wrong. In thinking you'd go for a scan but not for other screening, were you kind of separating out the purpose of a scan? Yeah, totally naïve about it, about the whole process. As far as I was concerned going for a scan was just to get a photograph and just to check the number of weeks. I wasn't aware at all that it was looking, intent on looking for any problems. I wasn't made aware of that, and I just wasn't aware of it. Is that a common perception, do you think, when you talk to friends? I think so, I think most people just happily go along to their first 12 week scan just thinking it's a purely a dating scan. It's called a dating scan and you don't enter into any discussion beforehand about what they are actually looking for, and what can be picked up by a scan.

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