"Screening for Down's, Edwards and Patau's Syndromes"

During my 12 week scan which took place in Jan we requested that we had the screening test completed to check for any of the above conditions.

I requested that a letter was sent in the post and would rather not have that news over the telephone

10 days later I received a phone call from the hospital to advise that we had a 1/118 chance that our baby had one of the conditions listed and were considered high risk. The lady rattled off all the options that we could consider and said a letter would follow in the mail to provide further details and confirm the details that she had advised over the phone. To say I felt over whelmed to say the least and upset as we didn't have this come up during our first pregnancy and completed unaware of what Downs really was, how it would affect the baby,  how would it affect our family financially, emotionally.. so many questions and zero answers unfortunately.

Once all the information sank in fully I called the hospital back and got the voice mail after several attempts I left a message, no one has returned my call and, two weeks later, we still have received nothing in mail with any information, guidance, advice and most importantly support during a difficult confusing time.

 My partner and I didn't want to wait and we also didn't want to put our baby through any risk of miscarriage when it could be completely fine. We paid £300.00 to go private and have the harmony testing carried out in early Feb.  Upon redoing the measurements from the babies neck, the hospital recorded, 3.3cm, the private clinic did this 3 times to be sure and measured 1.1cms which is a huge difference statistically.

We had a pain staking 2 weeks of unknowns, confusion, unanswered questions and contemplating the what ifs and what will we do. still with no letter or no follow up appt or call from the nhs.  This week we received the email and phone call from the private clinic after analyzing the babys DNA they concluded that we were low risk with and a small percentage of 0.01% chance of having any of the 4 chromosomes.

I feel let down, disguised and sympathetic towards any other person that needs to experience anything like this without the information and support they deserve during a difficult time.