Okay, and did anybody ever say to you, ‘You don’t have to have any screening’? Did it feel like a choice to you that you were, you could choose to have screening or you could choose not to?

For the…

For any, I mean like all the blood tests and the scans and things?

No, no it wasn’t a choice. It was, “You need to come back on such and such a day,” and that was it really. And if I couldn’t make it on that day, because I was too sick I’d phone and rearrange the appointment but it was never an option.

Are you happy with that looking back, or?

Yeah, yeah. Because the way I feel, it’s like the doctors know more than me, so if I need to have this done then I need to have it done, sort of thing. It was just me overcoming my fear of needles and blood that was like the main problem for me.

Had you got in your mind what you might do in response to various diagnoses or problems?

I think I was very much in a mindset – and it was conscious – of feeling, you know, the chances of anything being wrong to the extent where, you know, we may consider a termination were very, very slim in my own mind.

And I suppose that was possibly and not, you know, it’s not particularly sound reasoning but just based on long sort of histories of very good health and low risk factors for, you know, on paper for, for everything, and neither of us ever having been ill really, in any meaningful way.

And I know that that sounds ridiculous, in the sense that people who do encounter problems often say, ‘I can’t believe it’s happening to me. I know that, at a rational level, but emotionally inside myself I just felt that the sort of chances were very low of any problems.

And so I wasn’t avoiding the possibility, but I suppose I take the view on most things in life of, ‘Let’s not worry about things before they happen’ really. A fairly optimistic outlook and positive thinking, and all that we could do at that point in time was decide what information we wanted, on which to make decisions.

Well, I have found it, like I said very reassuring, and I think that if other women find it as reassuring as I do, then it’s definitely worth doing.

For some reason I never really thought about not having the screening. I mean, I never thought about, I think because I was looking forward to having anyone pay attention to me, give me a little attention, I was really looking forward to things like the 12 week scan. And they became markers that I got to say, ‘Oh, just 3 more weeks until…, you know as opposed to saying, ‘Oh, just 33 more weeks until the baby comes out. You get these shorter time frames, and so, as silly as it sounds, that’s a lot about what screening did for me.

And I thought that this woman did just a wonderful job of explaining everything and taking her time, and showing us where the nose bone was and that, making us feel a part of it.

I mean, you’re looking at something that’s black, white and various shades of grey, and it’s not the easiest thing to make out. And I’m not even sure that, you know, we were looking, I was probably looking at an eye when I was supposed to be looking at a nose, things like that.

But just the feeling that we weren’t just happening to be there. You know, that we were actually, she made us feel like we were a part of it and that we had some sort of say, and that we had brains. I mean, it was nice to feel like you were a part of the process.

You both liked it?

We did. We both went.

Was it a good experience in other ways as well, I mean just seeing the baby, was that?

It was amazing. I think it was more incredible for my husband than it was for me. I mean, he almost cried. He wouldn’t want me saying that! But I think for him it was the first time that the pregnancy really hit home. I mean, because he wasn’t the one throwing up and doing things like that, he didn’t really have this feeling that we were going to have a baby, and I think seeing that first scan was really an incredible moment for both of us, but especially for him.

Because at that point you’re not showing and you don’t look pregnant and you don’t, I mean, and I don’t think that men have the easiest time understanding the pregnancy part. I think they understand having children but I think the pregnancy part can be lost on a lot of men simply because they don’t go through it. So that was really an amazing time to see the pictures and to get to take them home. We had them on our refrigerator and it was really nice.

Well, at that stage we didn’t know whether there were one or two babies – I mean, obviously that I was pregnant – and it was very nerve-racking, really, and there was both the radiographer and also the consultant who had, or the doctor who’d implanted the embryos was present.

And because I’ve never had a scan – well, I had had one scan before – but I didn’t know what she was particularly looking for and they don’t, they didn’t explain what they were looking for, except of course that it would be, it would be something very tiny.

So it wasn’t, I didn’t know what, I didn’t know, I was waiting for them to tell me and the way that it happened was that the radiographer said, ‘Yes, there, I can see theres one sac and theres a…, I think they could see the fetal heart of one already, and she was concentrating on that one.

And then the doctor said to her, ‘Um, yeah, and if you open your eyes you’ll see the other one. So he was kind of, I mean he was, he just said it in a sort of off-hand kind of way, but that was how we found out that there were twins. And then they showed you where the tiny things were and gave you photo, gave you a copy of the photograph from the scan.

And did it alter your feelings seeing that? Did it look like babies, could you…?

No, they don’t, I mean they’re absolutely, they’re just shadows really, just two pockets, tiny pockets. But the amazing thing was that you could see the heart beat even at six weeks, so you could see this little flickering. And I think it does have the impact of, of making you very conscious of something that’s quite difficult to sink in or to imagine it really is the case.

Because obviously theres no other physical symptoms, they’re just present. And so I think it does begin a process of relating to yourself as a pregnant person much more sooner than would have happened if you don’t have the scans. Because you don’t, I mean, you may feel some symptoms, tiredness or beginning to feel unwell, but nothing as positive as actually seeing the tiny creatures and seeing their heartbeats. So yeah, I think it does have a sort of affect on your relat-, begins the bonding process probably.

I think at the end it’s just that, because if they don’t explain you exactly what is it for, and the statistical analysis involved and the whole thing, then basically you just enjoy the picture in the screen, and you ask for your photographs, because of course you have to ask for the photo of your baby and send it to your family over there and, and that’s about it.

That’s what I did – and I don’t have an excuse because I am supposed to know what is it all about. But yeah, once they told me it was fine, then I just enjoyed the whole happy experience. But that is not the point of the scan. That is not the point. The point of the scan is not to know the sex of your baby. That’s not the point, so, but basically that’s what people go for. You know, ‘I want to know if it’s a girl or boy and I want to have some nice pictures of it.

But then, it is because people have not explained exactly what the whole purpose of the scan is, yeah? So, the users, the people who receive the test, they see it in that way, while the other side, the medical side, is using it for another purpose. But then there is a bit of a, a division there. And I think it should come from the medical side, because that’s where the knowledge is, to explain to the other side the whole idea of this. Because it is not done to just make people enjoy a nice picture of your baby.

I mean, firstly, I would say, ‘Just realise it is an anomaly scan,’ because I think you can still, even though people tell you, you can still go into it thinking, ‘Oh, I’ll get to see my little baby and have a picture of them. And it could then come as a shock if somebody says, ‘Oh well, actually, theres this and this that might be wrong.

But more fundamentally, I would say, ‘Have you thought of what, or who you’re actually carrying?’ It’s hard, because I guess it comes down to what you believe, and if you believe that you’re carrying an individual, and this is already a person with a life and a soul and – just think of, through the implications of what, what you’re doing, because once you know theres an abnormality, are you prepared to terminate and just the consequences of that? And if you think, well, you wouldn’t want to anyway, well, then, why have the scan?

So I guess I would encourage people to think through fundamentally what, you know, ‘Who are you carrying, basically? Is this a person, or do you just think it’s a, a bunch of cells or something?’ And I would think the answer’s ‘a person. This is already a little person, even if they haven’t said hello to you yet, effectively.

So from my belief I’d encourage them to think that way, but you can only say so much. It’s up to each one to make their own decisions. But to think it through, I think is the most important, because maybe you just do things.

It depends also on how you react to GPs, and some people can feel, ‘Gosh, I don’t know anything. I’d better do what everyone else does and what they say. And just to say that, you know, ‘You can stop and think it through. I think I had it easier because with a husband with a medical background it wasn’t hard to talk about – get more information and talk about the implications.

I imagine if somebody doesn’t have immediate access to information like that, it might be easier just to say, ‘Oh well, let’s just do it,’ because that’s what most people do. But yeah, I’d encourage people to think about it and then make a decision.