Sexing Scan aka 20 week scan

The 20 week scan is not a ‘sexing’ scan, it is an abnormality scan.

I am a health professional. I work in theatres and have had the privilege of caring for premature neonates right up to the elderly in a range of specialities.

Because of this, I know a myriad of different abnormalities that babies can be born with. I also know that there is an army of doctors and health professionals out there doing their best to care and help all those with health issues, congenital or otherwise.

People would ask me leading up to our 20 week scan if we were going to find out what we were having, I’d jokingly quip back ‘we’re having a baby!’. I was always dead against finding out the sex of our baby just because I wanted it to be a massive suprise and something Rob (my husband) was going to shout out to me in the delivery room. All I wanted was a happy, healthy baby. I couldn’t choose so I really didn’t mind. Plus the nursery was going to be yellow and grey, irrelevant of if I had a girl or a boy.

Walking into the scan department back in December I did so full well knowing that we were going to be finding out if everything was ok with our baby. I was nervous, because I always knew there was a possibility of bad news.

The sonographer was taking her time… I could tell. I know what face health professions use when they’re trying to hide bad news. (I know cause I’ve pulled it myself). She told us to go for a walk, to try get the baby to move so she could get a better view. Come back in 30 minutes. We did… again she took her time.

Although I’m no sonographer I kind of know what I’m looking at. She told me she couldn’t make out certain structures in the heart and couldn’t define blood flow correctly. I told her to show me. She did, there was a big hole in the ventricular septum. She didn’t tell me what she was actually seeing, because shes not a doctor, she wasnt allowed. I could see it myself.

What I also saw (before it all went south was that we were having a boy). I wont put how I know cause I’d never want to spoil it for other people. I couldn’t be 100% but I was pretty sure.

She asked us to wait in the waiting room while she wrote the report and referred us to Leeds. I was shell shocked, so was Rob. I knew what the outcomes could be. Rob was asking what it could be also (maybe it would be fine when we went for the next scan). I was hoping for the best… a simple hole in the heart. Something fixable, or even livable with.

I should of been going back to work holding scan photos to wave in people’s faces of my perfect little baby, instead I couldnt go back. I had to go home, not answering my phone to any one other than immediate family. All who reassured me it would be nothing. I turned to chat groups such as mums net or baby centre to try reasurre myself. All it proved what that anything could, and would happen.