Gender mix up nhs

[Mamascone]

I am currently 33 weeks pregnant, I already have a 5 year old DS and we decided to find out the gender at 20 weeks anomaly scan, we were told girl and absolutely over the moon as we were really hoping for a little girl. We then had to have another scan at 22 weeks as the baby had their hands over the face so all the checks couldn't be done and a (different) sonographer told us again definitely a girl.
Fast forward 3 months and we had to have a growth scan as she was measuring a little big... To be told that we were in fact definitely having a boy (couldn't hide from that fact 😂). Has this happened to anyone else? We've been so upset, trying not to be and to embrace the positives that he's a healthy little boy but we'd had lots of lovely girls clothes gifted to us and I'd really bonded with my baby girl in my mind. Has this happened to anyone else?

3 scans said a dd. Bloody shocker when ds arrived!!
Joke on now how they missed the big handle they pulled him out with!!

@AlternativePerspective

You need to take some time to grieve your girl. Even just a couple of days. And then start fresh again with your lovely boy vile comment. On a topic where many women suffer actual pregnancy loss you’re telling a poster to grieve a girl who never existed? Horrible.

Oh wow, get over yourself.

As someone it has happened to (and someone who has had mc's also) there was a very short period of 'grief' of that named 'lost' dd... And then a celebration of your new ds!! And dd is just a jokey memory and ds gets reminded of his girly name by his siblings! Def no regret of my fabulous ds!! It is a strange experience though! Unless it has happened to you no judging please!

@Poppiesway1

I’m an NHS sonographer. The Trust I am in had a 92% accuracy rate on fetal sexing for 2021. We audit this each year. Reasons for it being an incorrect opinion of fetal sex (even over multiple scans) are increased usually BMI restricting views or suboptimal fetal position. We do give our patients both a verbal and written warning that we are not 100% accurate at fetal sexing.

However….
Mothers whose baby is discovered to be of a discordant sex are more likely to have impaired mental health during pregnancy which may affect the labour and delivery. It can also affect the mental health of the family after delivery and mothers may be more at risk of domestic abuse (Jylha et al, 2010).

Posters telling the OP to just get over it do not understand it is a very real grief that can be felt over the loss of what OP thought was their baby girl. When this occurs there may well still be a healthy baby but it is not the baby originally being bonded with and the process of bonding needs to begin again after grieving for what was taken.

@Poppiesway1 Hello, thank you for this comment. I must add, we were asked if we wanted to know the gender without asking too. I did not get any information about stats though was told by the sonographer she was 99% sure about the baby being a girl. The second scan we were told the same...no one ever mentioned it was not 100% accurate.

Sadly I can completely believe the information you shared and although I did have a few days feeling bereft I am very happy to be growing another healthy baby boy. I am amazed by some of these harsh responses and the false equivalency going on with people telling me i am not allowed to be sad because the baby has a heartbeat etc.

@Mamascone people seem to forget that you can be two emotions at once - happy that your baby is healthy but maybe sad/confused that it's a different gender to what you initially believed.
I was on a thread a week or so back where op asked for advice about a certain condition in babies/children, a non life threatening thing but obviously she was sad. Someone told her to be grateful the baby didn't have x condition as that would be much worse.

@Poppiesway1 is the sex recorded at the anomaly scan then? I'v had problems identified at the anomaly scan before so I know how important they are. Didn't find out the sex this time and had assumed it wasn't recorded anywhere.

@Easterbunnyiswindowshopping

As someone it has happened to (and someone who has had mc's also) there was a very short period of 'grief' of that named 'lost' dd... And then a celebration of your new ds!! And dd is just a jokey memory and ds gets reminded of his girly name by his siblings! Def no regret of my fabulous ds!! It is a strange experience though! Unless it has happened to you no judging please!

@Easterbunnyiswindowshopping I have only just realised this thread had any responses and I am amazed by some of the awful judgy comments haha! I have had my period of grief now, my partner and i are very excited for our son's arrival, but we will always remember the brief 3 months of preparing for a baby girl we will probably never have. It has been a very strange time indeed!

If my son wanted to wear tutu's it'd be cool with me

You're the one that mentioned you've been given "girls clothes" in the op.

@princesspopppy where I am it’s not recorded on patients records. (Unless its twins and the parent is happy for us to document it - it helps to stop a mix up of twins in utero when scanning and reporting then).
For hospital audit purposes the patients hospital number is recorded with the opinion of what the Sonographer thought the baby was… we then have to wait for baby to be born and we can check that way. We started doing this when there was a high proportion of babies being born of discordant sex. Quite a few were found to have been sexed at a private company such as window to the womb (that is a whole other issue of not using qualified sonographers). Our Trust does not allowed us to give a written / sealed opinion for gender reveals so many will have this done privately. There were issues when midwives complained Sonographers were getting it wrong and on investigation most were from the private company. It was then we started auditing ourselves to see what our accuracy rates were too and we can see reasons then for why it may have been wrong when looking at 20 week scan reports.

My sil was told her 3rd child was going to be her 3rd girl. When he was born he was a boy! It really affected her for quite a while - not that he was a boy because she was delighted and he was very much loved - but just that she had got used to the idea that she was having 3 girls.
She kept saying "but I've taught [dd2] to say Ermintrude (obviously not the real name)" which obviously didn't really matter but I think it was the loss of control over what she'd expected.
Ignore anyone who tells you this isn't a big deal - it's a shock when something turns out to be different so I agree with the person who said to grieve what you assumed was what was going to happen and then embrace what is going to happen now.
Good luck - I'm sure you'll adore your little boy when he arrives x

I mean one of each is the dream

What an ignorant remark.

A living child is "the dream".

@Poppiesway1 thank you, that's really interesting. The sonographer I had this pregnancy was amazing, I told her how nervous I was and she did say most people don't understand that it's a serious medical examination.
I'v always thought most private places look dodgy but loads of people say they're staffed by people who work in the local hospital. Not good if they're not properly trained!

@princesspopppy What many of these private firms are now doing is bringing in staff who are HCPC registered and then training them in house to scan for these types of places. It’s a sneaky way around ensuring their CQC status. (A large UK franchised firm have employed radiographers from abroad and registered them as hcpc). It’s much cheaper Labour for the companies than paying a fully qualified Sonographer.
NHS sonographers have completed at least a post grad certificate in ultrasound. These firms are not providing this level of skill/training. It’s quite scary. But until the government protect the title of Sonographer then anyone can perform ultrasounds unfortunately.

I also work privately so not against these types of scans.. however both myself and the other Sonographer working for my company are properly qualified with over 30 years experience between us in ultrasound alone.
It would be helpful if mumsnet took on the government and help us to protect sonographers title to stop and old time dick or Harry from scanning!

@driftcompatible

You'd have been more upset if there hadn't been a heartbeat. The sex of the baby is absolutely inconsequential. If you didn't want the 'risk' of a boy, don't get pregnant.

Clothes are clothes.

Bonding with the IDEA of a girl based on stereotypes is silly.

You have a healthy baby. Be glad of it.

Some of these responses are incredibly harsh, this sort of false equivalency is absolutely ridiculous, so basically you are saying you're only allowed to have any negative emotional response to something if it's the absolute worst possible scenario, such as if your baby doesn't have a heartbeat?! You don't know anything about the history, and this comment also misses the point entirely. I was 7 months in, had done all the awful worrying at the beginning of my pregnancy (as well as months and months of trying to get pregnant, then having a hideous first trimester) and got past all the anxiety and anomaly scans to then be told twice that my baby was a girl. Naturally we had bonded with her in our minds, chosen a name etc. And btw it would be pretty weird not to when you're heavily pregnant and preparing for a well wanted child, and anyone who says gender is "inconsequential" either doesn't have children or has not had experiences with different genders 😂. I don't raise my son with "gender stereotypes" he is free to make his own choices in regard to what he wears, plays with and he's already a little feminist BUT as someone who was born and raised female with siblings of different genders I'm not ignorant enough to say there's no difference between boys and girls, no matter how liberally they're raised. Comments like this also show such a lack of empathy regarding women in pregnancy, no wonder so many women end up with PND with this sort of medieval attitude that if you're lucky enough to have a child you don't get to have any other feelings other than absolute joy all the time. Life doesn't work like that and not everything is so black and white (or in this case pink and blue as you seem to think that is the issue here 😂)