what happens during a 12 week scan?

[i5kiwiii]

will i be able to find out the gender, and do all the tests for downs and such? how long roughly is the whole appointment?

They’ll check the baby has a heartbeat and otherwise looks like a normal pregnancy. They’ll check how many babies there are. Then they’ll measure and date them. No to sex, that and the rest of the anomaly scan is done at 20 weeks. Yes to Downs, Edward’s and Patau. If it’s anything like our hospital you’ll be there a while but the scan itself will be less than 10 minutes.

It's too soon to find out the sex.

They'll take various measurements but you won't find out results of Downs tests etc on the day - they send you a letter a bit later telling you the probability of your child having it (e.g 1 in 8750 or whatever). If the result is below a certain threshold - I think about 1 in 300, could be wrong - you'll be invited for further discussion and testing if you want it.

You'll be able to get pictures, though you might have to pay for them.

You're only in the actual scan for a few minutes, although there may be fannying on with urine samples etc as well as general waiting around.

Good luck!

At the first scan you're really just hoping not to have a blighted ovum or ectopic!

An ectopic would have been obvious before 12 weeks.