And by that stage I'd, I thought it was past the CVS stage but we were getting into discussions about blood tests and whether I would have blood tests or not. And I said, “Well, I think I need to talk to somebody about blood tests.” And me and my partner had spoken about blood tests, and we were both unsure about what the position, how to go about it and how we both felt.
So this midwife, who works very closely with the consultant, took us into a side-room and we talked about the blood tests, and the major thing that came out of it was that my previous history would go down and would be counted. They couldn't do blood tests without using my previous history, which I wasn't happy about.
And the other thing that came out was that if we had blood tests we were, in fact, making a choice to have amniocentesis because the results would come back high risk, more likely than not, because of my previous history. So we weren't deciding to have blood tests or not, really. We were deciding to have amnio. And as we'd already decided not to have CVS we both felt that we didn't want to have the pain and the stress of going, having amnio. So, really, we've just relied on scans throughout this pregnancy.
Do you feel comfortable with that decision?
Totally, yeah, totally. I think sometimes it's just assumed that you'll have all these blood tests, and you'll have this and you'll have the other, and I don't think there should be any assumption. I think that you should be made aware that it is totally, it is a choice. You don't have to have it.
There are so many things that you have to do in pregnancy, like blood pressure and urine samples, and you just think the blood test is just another one of those things that you have to do, and it's not necessarily true. I mean, certainly with me, having, just talked through the process of having the screening tests, I didn't realise that it would be, I was making a choice to have amnio, basically. Because I knew it would come back high risk and I didn't want that stress on myself, really or the baby. You know, I just didn't want that stress. |
