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When I was pregnant last time around, to prepare for giving birth we went to the NHS antenatal classes, I went to pregnancy yoga weekly, I read lots of books, magazines and blogs. It was the only time I could watch ‘One born every minute’ (couldn’t stomach it before or after!) We decided against paying for the NCT antenatal classes as we didn’t feel like we needed them, and they seemed like an extravagance.

Fast forward two years, and I can’t believe I’m contemplating this, but I’m thinking of doing NCT…. To buy some new friends!!

See, most of the mums I’ve met since having W who had done NCT generally agreed that the classes were ok but the best thing about it was the new lifelong friends they’d met…. Often the dads as well as the mums.

When I was on maternity leave last time around I was lucky to know about 5 people that were also off, who I did meet up with from time-to-time. I met some lovely people at the long list of classes I did, but never felt quite confident enough to suggest meeting up for a coffee/play date. Quite a few of these lovely people were already in NCT groups (they’d met at the classes) and they seemed like clans… impenetrable. Inseparable.

So I was quite envious of them at times. They were in whatsapp groups and messaged each other daily and during the night feeds. I can’t complain, whenever I felt lonely or was having a bad day, there was always a friend I could text who would understand exactly what I was going through… And I remember Twitter chats with other night feeders fondly…. But did I miss out? These little sisterhoods where you’re all going though the same issues, at the same time.

Due to the nature of NCT and the cost of the courses, I think you’d generally find like-minded people so a good chance of getting on with them, actually I only know one person who didn’t gel with her NCT group (but her OH bonded well with the dads so it was still worthwhile!)

I have plenty of friends, some with children, some without. I have a couple of close friends who’ll be off on maternity leave when I am. I’ll make plenty of new friends when W and his little brother go to school….

…but I’m still leaning towards the NCT class! It’s crazy, it will cost at least £100 at a time when we’re trying to save money. We had a positive birth experience last time around and don’t feel like we need more antenatal training (although the the refresher courses do cover topics like sibling rivalry too!)

Do you know what all this is about? FOMO (fear of missing out!), and so far FOMO is winning but I’ll see how I feel in a few weeks time 🙂

What would you do?!

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We were so blasé, sat there waiting this time, we’d been through this before, we knew what to expect, it would be fine!

We got called into the scan and quickly saw our baby wriggling away on the monitor. Relief. Everything’s fine, we smiled and joked while the radiographer took his measurements.

‘I can’t quite get the baby into the right position, can you sit outside for a bit and I’ll call you back in?’

No problem, we thought, still happy that he/she was wriggling too much to be caught on camera!

We get called back in and scanned again. We get told the nuchal fold is reading high (3.9mm when the safe cut-off is 3.5mm).

We get put in another room so we don’t have to sit in a corridor with all the happy parents-to-be. Midwife comes in. Basically tells us that the odds are that there’s a 75% chance that there’s something wrong with the baby… 50% genetic, 25% something wrong with the heart… So a 25% chance that baby is ‘normal’.

World falls apart.

She tells us our next options are an amnio or something similar. She says we’re referred to the ‘fetal medicine dept’ who we’ll hear from in a few days.

That evening I think we both felt pretty numb, as we both googled away I found there’s a private blood test (nifty) you can have for £500 which will tell you about odds of genetic disorder. (I think this the one now being rolled out in the NHS). A couple of days later I had that, they also scanned us again but said that baby was measuring at 11 weeks so too early to read the nuchal fold.

A week of agonising waiting… we’d agreed to take everything step by step and not make any decisions until we had some hard facts, we couldn’t make decisions based on odds. So I tried not to think about (thought about it at all the time) whether we’d have to terminate the pregnancy due to a life-limiting disorder, or whether we could raise a child with Down’s syndrome.

The test came back good, baby had 3million to one odds of having Down’s or another couple of major genetic disorders. Relief but nerves and uncertainty still prevailed.

A week later we had our first appointment at the fetal medicine department – another scan (this time I was actually at 12 weeks!) and an appointment with the consultant. He said the nuchal reading was now within the safe range, but because they’d spotted it earlier we were still at risk. He estimated that the 75% had dropped down to maybe 25% which would drop down further if the 20 week scan went ok.

He wanted to see us again before Christmas, so I was about 15 weeks. Again, happy with the nuchal fold and a short chat with him gave us much-needed confidence, he thought the odds of there being something wrong were now down to 10%-15%.
We finally started telling people, and could finally start believing that this was happening, we could start bonding with the baby.

So it’s been a very odd start to the pregnancy, if I’d known my dates I wouldn’t have had that first scan at 10 weeks with that reading. If I was a year younger (I’m 35) I wouldn’t be classed as high risk and my poor odds would have been much better. On the plus side, at 20 weeks pregnant I’ve already had 5 scans, 5 chances to see our beautiful wriggly baby. I’ll now get a scan every month, great service from our beloved NHS!

Above all, I can only be grateful. Hopefully we will have a happy ending, our odds are good. I know so many people don’t get their happy ending. I can’t for one minute try to put myself in their shoes, but those few weeks of uncertainty were enough to make me very lucky and blessed that we’ve got this far.