"I will be eternally grateful to the screening team"

Following multiple miscarriages over the past three years, we finally made it to a 12 week scan; Helen our sonographer was lovely, she empathised with my anxiety following our history and executed an incredibly professional scan experience, sending us away with the most beautifully detailed print outs of our baby.

A few days later I had a call from the screening team to tell me my results had come back as high risk. I was a mess on the phone, unable to talk through my tears; the empathy and information during the call was the perfect balance. I was given the opportunity to go and discuss my results face to face.

On arrival, Sophie the midwife immediately put me at ease, she was kind, caring, empathetic and incredibly professional. She had excellent knowledge and delivered this at the perfect pace and using language I could fully process. She was non judgmental, allowing me to ask as many questions as I needed and to talk openly and honestly. Sophie had prepared for the meeting by reading up on my history, including finding the screening results from a healthy pregnancy I’d had over 4 years ago. This provided personal context for the data and helped us to make the difficult decision that faced us.

We made the decision to undergo a Chorionic Villus Sampling (CVS) procedure; described as intrusive I was incredibly anxious about the experience. Again, Sophie was there to provide constant reassurance. Robbie, who was leading the procedure had an excellent balance of empathy, professionalism and humour to lighten the mood. Apologies to the rest of the team who played a huge part in the procedure success but names I can’t recall.

I will be eternally grateful to the screening team at Treliske for making what was an incredibly stressful time, as comfortable as it could possibly have been.

Thank you, I don’t know how you guys do it, particularly under the challenging times the NHS are facing.