Weird behaviour of the anomaly widwife

[TheLighthouse23]

This was a while ago, but I’ve never stopped thinking about it and whether there is more to it. I’m 20 odd weeks pregnant and due to a previous dermoid cyst I had to travel to Exeter for all my scans when we lived in notts with my husbands job. (We’d moved from Exeter) so on the anomaly scan I brought my daughter with me who was asleep in the buggy. She would have been coming up 2.
I said “sorry I had to bring the baby with me as my husband is working” and she replies “thats not a baby” in a really flat, bitchy way. She wasn’t jolly in the slightest.‘I felt stupid and just rather wary of her. It was just us two in the room.
sk she scans me and when it gets to the gender she asks if I want to know and I say as my husband isnt there and he’s like to find out with me, could she possibly wrote it on a piece of paper just B or G and I’ll open it when we are together. She says no you either find out now or not at all. So I um and ah for a minute and she rolls her eyes and sighs. So I say ok now please. She says while taking her gloves off “I’m afraid it’s another boy” which was me totally confused as my “baby” was a girl but I guess dressed in boys clothes- dungarees and red shoes and didn’t have much hair. It completely ruined my experience of finding out his gender. But typical of me I thanked her so much for her time and told her to have a lovely day on the way out. Years later or if I’d had someone with me I would have said something of course like “I beg your pardon?” Or “what did you just say”‘I’ve thought of it hundreds of times. She’s definitely in the wrong job. I would have thought seeing people’s happiness all day every day would make you a kind person. But she was an outright horrible cruel person. Mostly I wonder if she says that to everyone who has a child of the same gender already or if she hates boys. Am I overthinking it ?

She won’t always be ‘seeing people’s happiness’ though. Perhaps the case(s) before you was for a disastrous outcome.

It’s an unforgiving system where taking breaks if you’re having a rough session isn’t always possible and you just have to plough in through and get the scans done. Most HCPs are decent people but we all have bad days and I can certainly think of times (as an anaesthetist that regularly covers obs) that I’ve probably been less enthusiastic than I usually try to appear….usually it’s after something flipping awful has happened but you can’t tell the next customer that, you just have to hope you’ve cobbled it together enough to get away with it.

Most hospitals won't even scan you for an anomaly scan if you have a child with you, so you're fortunate she did. And you faffed around about the gender too. Sounds like she's had a long day and you made it longer to be honest.

She sounds awful

Hmm never heard this and I'm a midwife. Most of our service users have children and limited childcare. They'd never come to their appointments if we said that. They couldn't!

It's just something one has to work around.

Around me the hospitals won't scan if you have a child with you, and they nearly didn't see me for a general appointment because I had my 1yo with me. It wasn't until I argued firmly with the reception staff that antenatal care shouldn't only be available to those privileged enough to have childcare that they grudgingly relented and let me see my consultant. But it's a hard no for scans.

I agree that you’re lucky they scanned you. In my trust the letter says in bold that you cannot bring other children with you. They so seem to have a rule about not writing down the sex of the baby, I think in case they get it wrong. Her tone wasn’t nice though.

Im so sorry Op for thqt experience and for the absolute horrendous, heartless responses on here somehow displacing this onto you and saying she had a bad day, you're lucky and all sorts of rubbish- she literally said to you 'I'm afraid its another boy'- disgusting tbh. If I were you I'd write in. I work in the justice system and I've had people feed stuff back years later, just because they were still thinking about it, you can do this too and just explain you've always wanted to write in and raise it. Absolute bitch, she has no idea of your background or what you mightve been going through.

Although most do their job well and are professional, I’ve had a few cunty medical staff over the years. Some people are just miserable fuckers.

When I was having my tonsils out aged 25, one of the nurses was an absolute bitch to me and the other women on the ward. My best friends father was a consultant at the same hospital at the time and he popped in to see me on his break. This nurse was super polite and trying to be quite flirty with him and was clearly shocked he’d come to visit me. He said he knew her so I told him about her behaviour to me and the other women on the ward. A couple of hours after he left, this same nurse was a changed woman. She couldn’t do enough for any of us. I thought it was just because she knew I knew this consultant, but it turns out he had had a word on mine and the other women’s behalf. I sometimes wonder whether it was enough of a shock for her to be a decent person from then on or whether she went back to miserable and unprofessional.

Just remember it says more about them than you, miserable fuckers.

Thank you so much. I just want to be able to put it out of my head. I didn’t ask to go back to Exeter. They wanted me to because it suited them to have their records tied up nicely.!we didn’t own a car and my husband was earning 24k a year as a just qualified structural engineer. There were plenty of others out there with their partner and a child. So it wasn’t that. My mother had just been told that her breast cancer had metastasised to her brain so she couldn’t/wouldnt have my daughter even though I wouldn’t have asked her as she was violent as anything to me at that age until I escaped. I was only 23. My husband commands a certain amount of respect wheras I still now but especially then come across a total fool. And beat myself up for it afterwards too. Thank you just thank you for being ao so kind. I’m so grateful… “just” one person but you nailed her and the rest of them. I have no idea ! I don’t post here often.
are you saying there’s someone I can write to ? I know the exact date and department. Do you mean the hospital? Honestly I can’t thank you enough for being human.

in this hospital in Exeter it seemed that a lot of people there had a child with them. And it was not my decision to go to Exeter to get scanned. Even so - are you saying that would be a good enough reason to say what she did about being afraid it’s another boy ? I can’t think how she could have meant that kindly could you ? Should spiteful people work in healthcare do you think? I tend to think not

Ah, there we have it. Lashing out and getting personal. What a charmer you are. Unfortunately the world doesn't revolve around you and your brood.

j just can’t get over the part where you ignore the fact that she comments on whether my child is a baby or not and says in an really mean unkind tone “I’m afraid it’s another boy”

It would have been better if her tone was a little warmer, but her job is to do the scan, not to give you a positive interaction or stage manage your "experience of finding out the baby's gender".
And are you sure her tone was mean and unkind, or was it just the cool and professional tone of someone focused on the practicalities of her job? I suspect the "I'm afraid" part came from an assumption that people tend to want 'one of each'. She shouldn't have said it but she is a midwife, taking care of your baby's health.
Other mothers (perhaps even the patient she had just seen) may be dealing with extremely bad news about their child, which is likely to make some midwives exasperated by these much much smaller concerns.

I think the rules are different all over the place. I know they aren’t keen on dc I did have to bring mines once. I was scanned every two weeks!

In Canada they booted out DH, “it’s a medical procedure” they let him in at the end for a quick look.

How long ago was this?
People do sometimes just have bad days, perhaps you caught her on one of hers.
I know around here they don’t children in in case it’s bad news, but then once the scan is completed they might be allowed in to have a quick look

“Hopefully your (sic) unemployed”? How vile.

Did you explain you'd travelled over two hundred miles for the scan as apparently they couldn't transfer your care and therefore it was completely unreasonable for you to not have brought your child? I think my back would have been up before it had even started for that reason, it seems complete madness.

But most of us will have experienced an unfriendly health professional at some point in having children, the time to bring it up is then not some years later (how long ago was this by the way?) Might be time to move on.

Expressing disappointment, or assuming your disappointment at "another boy" isn't ok. But the being a bit short with you around the whole finding out the sex thing is fair. It isn't her job to wait around while you faff about trying to decide if you want to know or not and expecting her to be all cutesy with a secret in an envelope.

You’re not coming off well here @TheLighthouse23 . You didn’t like the way she spoke to you, fine. The time to deal with it was then not years later, what do you think will happen after so long ago and with no evidence? The travelling form Nottingham to Exeter just for their convenience doesn’t stack up either, unless they thought the move was temporary.

The PP disagreed with you, but flying off the handle and being abusive casts you in a bad light, not them.

No sorry, you’re reaching ridiculously there. There’s no professional way you tell an expectant mother “I’m afraid it’s another boy”

Life isn't a film, people have bad days, why are you brooding over it?

I’m afraid it’s another boy

That's an appalling thing for a sonographer to say.

That was absolutely complaint worthy on its own.

The rest is all tone and each persons perception, but that is an appalling comment from a HCP and there is zero excuse for it.

Her day was immaterial. She was unpleasant and really quite snotty.

You wouldn't put up with poor service elsewhere why do people think it's ok for nursing and medical staff to be.

I imagine the less than perfect appointment was all the more disappointing gaving trecked from Nottingham to Exeter. You've gone on to have two more still travelling to Exeter ( from Cambridge) which seems rather unusual especially viewing it as a loveky day trip. I can not remember much at all about my various scans and appointments over 3 pregnancies. I think file the experience away as one of those things..