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3-4 years since pregnancy ended

Interview 05

Interview 05

Age at Interview: 40
Sex: Female
Background: Pregnancies ended in 2002 and 2003. No of children: 2 + [2]. Ages of other children at interview: 3, 6 months. Occupations: Mother - NHS manger, Father - company director. Marital status: married. Ethnic background: White British.

Brief outline:Her 2nd pregnancy: 20-week scan detected neural tube defect. Specialist scan confirmed encephalocoele. Pregnancy ended at 23 weeks by feticide and induction. Post mortem identified Walker-Warburg syndrome - a genetic abnormality. 3rd pregnancy: nuchal scan revealed baby had anomalies, and by 19 weeks scan showed hydrocephalus. Pregnancy ended at 20 weeks by induction. Walker-Warburg syndrome identified at post mortem. Both parents are carriers of recessive gene. 4th child born in 2004.

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She was determined to have more children and was very pleased when she became pregnant.
Print So you know, I got the machine rolling, because you know - I will get pregnant - it was like a military campaign in the household to get pregnant. I bought these pee-on, pee-on sticks, ovulation sticks, it was like, 'I'm not going to miss D-Day, it's going to happen this month'. And my husband's saying, “Just calm down, calm down. It might not happen.” And I'd actually read in this book that a lot of people, or some people, not uncommonly, get a kind of sub-fertility because their anxiety levels and everything are so great that they get quite, fixated about it. So anyway, the campaign commenced and I got pregnant that month which was great. And I'd been taking my high dose of folic acid which gave me a risk rating of 1 in 100 for another baby with neural tube defect, which was what we thought at this stage the baby had had. And I just was, you know, my cup was half full, it was 99 chances out of 100 that the baby would be fine and I didn't really believe anything other than it would be fine.

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