in thinking a 'check up scan' shouldnt be done in the same area as women having miscarriages, ectopics etc?

[misdee]

i had to have a scan today to check position of baby#5. apart from this, i have had an uncomplicated pregnancy.

However, I was very aware of through the doors is the ward for women whose pregnancies arent going so well. They are also scanned in the same area :(

My previous scans inc dating and anaolomy scans have been done in a different maternity unit. Obviously there will be cases down there when news isnt good for some. but to scan someone with no major issues in the same area as women losing their babies seem insensitive and wrong.

why is this happening?

really felt for the women going past me with my bump :(

i feel very lucky too. i was given a private room away from the main ward to recover after emcs at 34 weeks after loads of complications. dd was in scbu, just under observation perfectly healthy but small. i was explicitly told to press the call button any time day or night and someone would take me up to be with her. wonderful caring staff, really sensitive to the fact that i wasn't with my baby - and actually i was just so overwhelmingly relieved that she was ok that i didnt mind that she couldn't be on the ward with me.

Lots of women have scans because they think they are having a MC and everything turns out ok.

I don't think it would be possibble to decide before a scan if it was appropriate for a women to be in the MC or good news room.

IME just because a scan is routine does not mean there will not be bad news.

The hospital here has everyone in the same waiting room, if there is bad news you go out of the back door of the room in which you are scanned into the bereavement suite.

I found this much easier than walking back through the waiting room.

I got wheeled into the routine Ante-natal clinic to have a scan to confirm that I'd lost our first baby. Strangely that didn't upset me. What was did was listening to the 20 min debate on the gynae ward as to who would get the only free spot with the sonographer that morning and who would get the one in 2 days time. It was between me and one other girl. They actually wheeled her down to the Ante-natal suite before deciding to pull her back without a scan and send me instead. She had to wait another 2 days to find out if she'd lost her baby

YANBU, it's a terrible set-up, but unfortunately very common.

Our local hospital has everything very close together, including the assisted conception unit which we attended for a good number of years. Our local hospital is relatively new too, so you would have thought they would have taken it into account during the planning.

these stories are all so

the position of this unit means that the first area you come to is the scanning area. beyond that is the ward where people are miscarrying, having ops for ectopics, molars etc etc. obviously there are other gynae issues going on past those doors, but its not ideal for the scan dept to be in that area IMO.

downstairs is a sep antenatel dept where they also do scans. i had my 12, 22 and 32 week scans done there.

YADNBU. In Feb I had an ectopic pregnancy. At St. George's Tooting, the EPU is in outpatients, as is antenatal. On the day I sat for an hour, bleeding with severe pain watching women arrive for check ups. After my diagnosis DH and I were returned to the same waiting room to wait to be admitted onto a ward and prepped for my tube removal.

Once on the ward of four women (2 EPs, 1MC and a bladder complaint) the woman with the bladder thing was allowed 12 visitors including new born twins. My Mum drew the curtains round the bed but said twins were then paraded up and down the ward crying. Mum then explained to the visitors the situation and was told to f-off. She went to the nurse who shouted at me for causing a disruption- having been calm all day I finally lost it at this point.

I was later that evening wheeled down to surgery via a wait for the lift outside the maternity ward (I know this is unavoidable).

A week later I had to return for blood tests, taken in, you've guessed it, the outpatients dept where the whole thing began.

So, YADNBU- one of the worst experiences of my life was compounded by poor logistics.

By way of footnote I was back in that waiting room four months later to visit the same midwife who had diagnosed the ectopic. But on that occasion she was able to show me my baby's hb. Am now 28 weeks. I know I am extremely lucky.

YADNBU :( All so sad.

When I was in early labour with DD1 they put me on the ante-natal ward in a room with 3 women who were having problematic pregnancies. I'd met one of them a few weeks before - she was in hospital trying to get her baby to stay in a bit longer and there I was trying to stifle my groans. It was not great.

And I wish they would have "crying lady run-off rooms" in EPAUs/scanning departments. I have done far too much blubbing in front of hopeful pregnant ladies. It's not fair on anyone. And I understand that sometimes there is a lack of space (once I found out that I had an ectopic because I was sat in a room with the only phone and the sonographer used it to ring the registrar) but happens in new hospitals too.

YANBU i remember when a girl was waiting to be scanned in the "normal" scanning part.
She was deciding if she should have an abortion or not, as she was on heavy medication (i was talking to her mum) that could severely damage the baby's nervous system.

There was me, biggest bump you have ever seen sitting next to that poor girl who desperately wanted her baby, and was likley to be told by docs to terminate

I don't think hospitals think sometimes.

I thought they had changed all this. I am saddened and shocked for all of you who have had horrible experiences

I have had to have my pg scans in the same place I used to take my beautiful girl for her fucking horrible, scary, crap scans when horrible crappy things were happening to her and we didnt know what was going on in her poor little body.

I have had a major meltdown every single time. Luckily the technicians have always been really nice and kind to me. But it doesnt make for happy memories of baby's first scan or for a relaxing experience.

Nothing else they could have done though.

i had to go for a lap- & hysteroscopy when desperately ttc. it was a day ward, and i was there with a couple of teens having terminations. as you come round from the anaesthetic they tell you how the op. went. mine was ok, but i could have been lying there with someone saying 'sorry, there's a problem, no babies for you', with a teen lying next to me (no curtains even) and me hearing 'baby was terminated, everything fine' a few seconds later.

it is all so traumatic, and the NHS just doesn't seem to have the money to allow for that little extra bit of care needed.

also, when i had dd, there was a woman who had twins in NICU and no baby with her - it was so hard for her, and being woken up by OUR babies crying must have been terrible.

Thankfully got spared that - EPU has a scanner at my local hospital. However, you do get sent to the happy baby scan department for fertility investigation scans and they also nicely route you to get to the EPU past the shiny new refurbished ante natal and maternity departments, down a succession of increasingly dingy dull paint-peeling corridors to the arse end of the hospital where normal departments cease to dwell to get to the EPU... nowt like slamming home we don't mean shit to the world hey gals!

The bit that annoyed me endlessly (apart from the misplaced apostrophe in the "scan photo's £2 donation" sign - yes, I can miscarry and be worried about punctuation simultaneously - I am THAT good) was the way there was no discretion over the outcome of each and every scan - they all walked past everyone waiting to go in with either an envelope and scan photo, or leaflet of heartbreak - and EVERYONE knew your fucking outcome straight away - like some kind of twisted Hogwart's sorting hat (I dubbed the vaginal ultrasound scanner the sorting dildocam).

We did thankfully have the crying lady room - put to good use when hubby was so hit by the wonderfully shit news last time that he nearly fainted.

I can't fault the EPAU staff for trying so hard with the shit situation - but wish the hospital would rethink layouts, or unblock the corridor so we don't have to go via the shiny amazing you're so special maternity bits to get told our children are dead - that's horrid.

Oh and who got a followup check after their ERPC?! I had... fuck all! Seriously do NOT get me started on that one.

Mrsted, so sorry to hear of all you have been through x

dd3 spent time in scbu, i was on a ward with 5 other women and their babies :( it was late at night when she was whisked away from me and they couldnt move me to a side room as none were available. it was hard, but i escaped to scbu ASAP, and only returned to the ward for meals.

emptyshell - sounds a bit like my hospital, you're not in west london are you??

thank you mrs ted. hopefully baby will be here around xmas to make it really special this year :)

I lost my Ds at 37 weeks and i must say that Leed's teaching hospital (st jimmy's) were brilliant, i didn't feel uncomfortable about my setting once.

Nah I'm not London-based.

Things really haven't come far since my aunt had a stillborn baby thirty-plus years ago and was put on the ward with the new mums and babies afterwards really have they?

Mind you - then when you have people who work IN the NHS coming on here whining about the cheek of women having bleeding and the like daring to want scans to find out if their babies are alive or dead and stealing resources from the ones who are having normal healthy pregnancies - it says a lot about the NHS really NOT feeling that we matter at all through its whole organisation.

You even have to walk through all the scan and materntity waiting areas in our hospital to deliver your pot o' sperm to find out if your hubby's got a wonky swimming team or not!

I'm still traumatised now by the way the NHS treated me, and I got off lightly. I wasn't given any choice in what happened to the remains of my baby - the form was shoved under my nose with a barked order to "sign this", and after hour after hour of probing and prodding I felt completely dehumanised and detached and wasn't given the option to question whether there were alternatives, what would happen or anything. I'm angry about being shoved out of the door with a leaflet and left to cook for a month before they gave us any answers, I'm angry with my wishes being ignored when I asked them to stop referring to my lost children as "products of conception", the lack of aftercare from both hospital AND GP (who charmingly denied me any support for the depression caused by repeatedly miscarrying unless I consented to stop trying for a child and have a coil fitted - thought sterilising people on mental health grounds went out with the Nazis - not in our practice!)... and yet, by many accounts - I had a relatively easy ride of it all.

Put brutally - why would the NHS care about us though (apart from a few gems of light out there)? We don't give them nice shiny corporate photo material of mummy and babies, we don't make them look good on any figures, we don't give them a warm glow about improving the quality of someone's life - we're the dirty little secret of the reproductive system, that thing no one wants to believe will happen to them and by and large the only thing the NHS can do for us is give the official confirmation and break our hearts.

I was given a privet room with my husband after my son was born, we were told if we needed anything just ask.

They went far beyond the call of duty there.

I briefly mentioned this on another thread,when i lost mine i had to walk past a load of strangers all waiting to be scanned as i sobbed and tried to keep my bladder controlled until got to the toilet.
Recently after some bleeding in early pg we waited about an hr for an "emergency" scan and were joined by a client of dh(copper)who proceeded to glare at us and make snarling remarks about the "piglet" i was carrying as he and his gf also waited for a scan,there was nobody around to tell and we really werent up to confrontation,thankfully everything was ok but i cant imagine how it would have been if wed had to walk past them following bad news.Definatley needs to be waiting rooms or at least get people in on time fgs.

What is so frustrating is that some things they get soooo right and other things soooo wrong.

Once I was an inpatient, St. Thomas's gave us a lovely private room, DH was allowed to stay overnight after DS2 was delivered. The staff were kind, courteous and we felt at every step that we were put first.

But then it is screwed up by something as simple as having to share coffee making facilities so that when DH went to make a much needed drink along the corridor where the babies were screaming a well meaning father to be said to him "hope that isn't yours screaming away out there". Not what you want to hear when your DC has just died.