NHS told to improve care for women in early pregnancy

[rainand]

Pregnant women at risk of miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy should have scan on day symptoms appear, says Nice

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/dec/12/nhs-care-women-early-pregnancy

Good

thats good news. i had to wait an agonising three days before they would scan me. and then another 4 days to go in for the ERPC. possibly the worst week of my life. all with very little sympathy / support from the hospital. and then a refusal for an early reassurance scan when i fell pg again (happily that pg worked out). the way that some HCPs dismiss MCs can be quite shocking.

Good. When I was pregnant with ds1 I had a bleed and was made to wait hours in a&e and then nigh on a week for a scan. I'm lucky he was fine but it was ridiculous scary and nerve wracking.

It's about time. I had a horrible experience when I MC a couple of years ago that was just so unnecessary.
I found out at my 12wk scan that the baby's heart had stopped at 8wks. As this was at a MW only led unit I was told to make my way to the main hospital in the next town. When I got there, despite being told I was on my way, they had not accessed my scan results on the computer, so DH and I were taken into what I can only describe as a broom cupboard and faced with a registra with a blank piece of paper who wanted to know why I was there and what details I could tell her.
I went back to the MW led unit on the way home to try and get a copy of the results but they wouldn't give them to me insisting the hospital could access them as their systems were linked.
I was booked in for an ERPC the next day. Arrived to find they still hadn't accessed my scan, but were quite happy to go ahead with the op. It took my asking three times that morning right up to the point just before I was put to sleep before the dr confirmed she now had the results.
Then to top that all off, one of the theatre nurses decides to congratulate the anaesthetist on the birth of his son and discuss how much sleep he was getting while I was being prepped. So, I'm lying there wondering if the scanner has made a mistake and I'm about to kill my baby and having to listen to this. If I had not been so traumatised I would probably have screamed my head off. Instead I tried to just shut it all out.

While I found everyone very friendly, I did think that quite a few of the professionals I met had lost their ability to think of me as a person, dare I say they had become desensitised to the human element of their job.

My hospital flately refussed to give my friend a scan when she had heavy bleeding early in her pregnancy. She was told not to make a midwife appointment before she was 16 weeks, if she didn't start having periods, because she had probably miscarried and it would be a waste of everyones time to be seen earlier. Awful wait for her. Turned out she hadn't lost the baby but she didn't know this for sure until her scan, when she was 18 weeks pregnant. Disgusting.

I am so happy about this. I had 3 mc's in a row then fell pg with this one (which is still in there thank goodness and all fingers crossed it stays that way!) and when I asked for an early reassurance scan the gp said that I will just have to wait and see as a scan won't stop a mc. Actually research by Lesley Reagan has showed that reassurance scans up the likelihood of positive outcomes!

When I had bleeding at 15 weeks I was told how painful it would be and that I might need medical intervention... and was still denied a scan. I fought and finally got one which showed everything was actually ok but I had complications that I can now adjust my lifestyle to accommodate (low-lying placenta).

I hope this helps the medical profession understand that we are people who need treating with empathy; that being pg/having a mc is not banal or to be easily dismissed as one of those things; and that to mc can often be a frightening experience.

Some of the stories on here are truly horrifying. I'm so lucky to have had 2 completely uneventful pregnancies but a friend of mine had light spotting at 7 weeks and had a scan the next day (all was fine). There seems to be such a difference in care depending on where you live. Its barbaric to make someone wait so long at such a worrying time, so sorry to all of you who have been treated badly.

Have to say that i have always been scanned on the day of presenting myself at EPAU. (ive had 7 mcs)

Its the fact that my local hospital desite building a "state of art" women & childrens centre, they neglected to see any reason to add on a gynacology ward to it...i kid you NOT!
So
Miscarrying women are admitted and placed on general surgical wards. I was sandwiched between a bowel resection and a mastectomy lady.

They moved on from placing the EPAU on the end of a postnatal ward, so i had to walk through an entire ward of new babies to get to the waiting room, sit between 2 heavily pregnant women while bleeding, in pain awaiting a scan to confirm my loss.

Still a piss poor service sadly.