"Terrible experience with sonographer"

We went for our 12 week nuchal dating scan after a long and gruelling process of IVF. The sonographer couldn’t get the baby to move so was pressing really hard on my tummy and asking me to do the same. At one point I was in so much pain from this I asked her to stop as I was worried about the baby and she said we have to keep going. This went on for about 20 minutes and then she said we would need to do an internal scan. This was absolutely fine with me as I had a lot of those through IVF.

Whilst doing the internal scan, she was prodding the uterus to try to get the baby to move and you could see on the scan that the baby was arching it’s back to get away from it. She still had no success.

After the internal scan, my husband asked if he could leave the room to go to the toilet to be told ‘no, your wife has been through all of this for you so you can wait’ by the sonographer. I was mortified and said it was absolutely fine for him to go to the toilet but she insisted he waited despite already needing it throughout the scan.

She then told us that we most likely won’t be able to have any of the screening for downs, Edwards and Pataus as I ‘hadn’t provided her with the correct pictures’. She told me our only option was to pay £500 for a harmony test.

At this point my anxiety completely broke out and I burst into tears as I had been so worried for the scan as well as just wanting to know everything is ok. Despite being able to see basic anatomy (she told us she could) she refused to tell us if everything was ok and if there was even a heartbeat which again sent me into total panic.

We were then told to wait in the waiting area and she brought us an appointment for 4 days later - there was no need to cause all of the worry and stress without even checking if they had an appointment.

I went home with terrible cramps from the internal scan, terrified that things weren’t ok with baby and that the cramping was a bad sign. I rang the pregnancy assessment unit as advised by my midwives and they were absolutely shocked at how we had been treated and were lovely with reassuring me and helping me to calm down.

From that scan onwards I have been absolutely terrified of having scans and I’m dreading going back for my anomaly scan at 20 weeks despite having a private scan at 16 weeks to find out the gender.