And I felt like a murderer. I didn't think my instincts were worth much. I was becoming numb to the whole process. I don't know how we got through the next couple of days. Later, I did see and hold our baby. We scattered his ashes over a bunch of snowdrops. Still, the consultant thought things would be OK. We had the same conversation, but obviously were not making any sense to her at all. No one else attended and we didn't have a service. The 18 -20 week fetal anomaly scan is a watershed in most pregnancies because for the majority of women it will be the last time they are scanned before giving birth. It felt as if we had gone power crazy. Very occasionally this second scan cannot be completed, for example because: In this case you will not be offered another screening scan but you will offered an all over physical examination for your baby after birth. And how wrong could they be? It can be such a shock so do whatever you need to feel better. Specialist scans are performed in specialist fetal units and if clinicians feel that there might be problems scanning will be done up to 32 weeks. The sonographer will be able to tell you the results of the scan at the time. If you choose not to have the scan you can still have all other parts of your routine antenatal care. The 18-20 week antenatal scan and further tests. They said the brain was okay -, We were in there for a matter of minutes, literally -, In and out. It feels very lonely and isolating. We couldn't say we'd lost the baby, because he was still kicking away, but we couldn't pretend everything was fine, either. Some people had underestimated how serious any abnormality found at this stage could be for the baby. I mean the lady who was scanning was very quiet for a long time. I want to enjoy my son again, without any reservations. I ran into the bedroom to tell Sam, who was ecstatic. And so began the most bizarre day of my life. The baby kicked, blissfully unaware of what I had done. I wanted to be a passive patient while the doctor did what he had to do. We walked all the way home. So it was quite common, this is what happens. But at the 20 week scan, which was on a Wednesday, we saw the nurse at the local hospital, the sonographer, and she did a scan and she found that the femur length was quite short in the, in the fetus. I came back probably about 17 weeks pregnant and had the anomaly scan at 20 weeks and like most people expected everything to be fine and to come away with a lovely picture but unfortunately that isn't what happened. So choroid plexus cysts on their own, no problem, but if there's something else wrong, then that's a problem. I was willing the results to be normal. They would then re-test me in two days time. The decision to terminate the pregnancy was my partner's and mine. He started to scan me with a cold expression, then told me, 'it didn't look good' and that 'my womb looked raggedy'. No one else but my partner saw how similar he was to our son. I feel empty and incomplete. So and you could see the exomphalus, this little pouch, which was obviously just the intestines where they are. Yeah - in, stomach, out. the amniocentesis) and the pregnancy had already ended, or because the scan was not routinely offered in their region 5 or more years ago. We saw the consultant, who was reassuring, saying that he would rescan me and was sure everything would be fine. I did. I had hope that the little bumps inside me were fighting just as much as I was to stay with me. In order for the sonographer to get good images of your baby, the scan is carried out in a dimly lit room. For women who have been given distressing news about their baby during the scan, there should be a health professional available to provide immediate support. These were said to be soft markers fo a range of trisomies, 2 of which were incompatible with life. The pain was excruciating, but nothing compared to how I felt inside. And the local hospital wanted to send us off to the regional hospital to actually confirm that, and were not really prepared to say at that time that there was something very seriously wrong. What happens at the second midwife appointment? Specialist scans had a powerful effect on some parents because they could see the baby more clearly and in some cases people recognised which parts of the baby's body were not working properly. Laura miscarried her twin babies in February. The gel makes sure there is good contact between the probe and your skin. Life expectancy of 30 or 40. . And still we asked to see a, Impact of the 20-week and later specialist scans. BabyCenter. I couldn't have the added responsibility for changing his mind. And it was then because we were at 20 weeks by this point, there was only fairly short window to actually, to get some more tests done, find out what the problems were, and then make any decisions that might have to be made. Severe chromosomal conditions such as Edwards' syndrome are now often picked up in the first trimester antenatal screening but itwill usually be more obviousat the 18- 20 week scan, though usually a firm diagnosis will not be made until one or two specialists have weighed up all available evidence about the baby - which usually means that another expert needs to scan the baby again, or until the woman has had an amniocentesis. It is also sometimes referred to as the mid-pregnancy scan . And they actually asked my husband to come in before they spoke to me. Tears started to roll down my face. Just doing it. The scan was inconclusive, but the size of my little bump was measuring a lot smaller than it should have for 10 weeks. News stories, speeches, letters and notices, Reports, analysis and official statistics, Data, Freedom of Information releases and corporate reports. The people who did know what was going on seemed far too sure that we were doing the right thing, that there was really no choice to be made. 12/12/2012 22:41. My heart goes out to you OP. (See 'Resources'). And of course some other measurements she needed to take like the width of the skull, which she couldn't take because the fetus was in the wrong position. I endured 12 hours of medication and in the early hours February 7, 56 days after my first scan (at nearly 18 weeks), I miscarried our babies. I had no idea if we were doing the "right" thing. Because we knew that that wasn't normal, that wasn't what we'd experienced before, it wasn't just the, 'There's the arm, there's the leg, oh look the baby's moving'. The first result, which tells you if the baby has Down's syndrome, is ready in three days, but the other chromosomal problems cannot be eliminated for up to three weeks. The blood test confirmed it was twins. Mumsnet carries some affiliate marketing links, so if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale (more details here). I was experiencing some light bleeding for the past few days. The next day, it was confirmed that my bloods had again dropped. Many parents were shocked by findings from the 20-week and later scans. And as soon as she said those words, both of us were like, 'Well what's wrong?'. We didn't name him. I can't remember the exact words but she said, 'There might be some fatal problems with your baby'. Eventually, the doctor finished the scan and said that some of the baby's measurements were very small. It's part of our family. Most scans are carried out by specially trained staff called sonographers. Despite this new discovery, the sonographer was still concerned. Not a good sign in a hospital consulting room. He told me that they may want to do blood tests, but that 'he didn't see the point'. Fine, go on my own. I thought surely everything is ok, as they couldn't detect twins the week before. See more information about the 20-week ultrasound scan. It was, 'Oh we'll come back to that'. See you in -. It felt so wrong. She didn't want to see the baby. Can't seem to find info on the Internet. And everybody knows and everything is right. Thanks girls, it's amazing how protected our babies are in there isn't it?! I was young, I didn't need one. It was just sort of deadpan faces, very serious looks, someone else coming to check. He had to come to the decision by himself. I didn't have a clue. There is more detailed information about the main conditions that are looked for during this scan on NHS.UK. 18-20 week scans provide clinicians with more information than earlier scans because by18 weeks a healthy baby should be larger and better developed. Is it the same scan or is it the same equipment? We thought it would all be over very quickly but, in fact, it was another 11 hours before the baby was delivered. There is always a chance that a baby may be born with a health issue that scans could not have identified. The milk came and stayed for what seemed like for ever. But you could see there was something wrong? The chances that anything bad will be discovered are v v small. At this point it wasn't looking great. I think I don't everything just seems a real blur because it was, it was such a strange experience. And, faced with feeling sorry for myself or feeling sorry for my child, I know which I'd choose. It was sick. And so, yeah we got to, carried on with the pregnancy, kept seeing the consultant, kept sitting in the waiting room outside, because there was a terribly long waiting time sometimes, depending on what time you had the appointment. It would be a personal tragedy for my partner and me, but that is all. We're still not at the end of our journey, but we're much further along. Do you have any thoughts about that? The scan will look in detail at your babys bones, heart, brain, spinal cord, face, kidneys and abdomen. It's quite common, perhaps 1 in 10 they find these, and within a few weeks they disappear. Sometimes specialist scans such as 3D scans, or MRI scans, are used to examine the baby in greater detail. DS had 2 soft markers: talipes (club foot) and 'echogenic locii' somewhere - heart I think. SO much upset and needless angst has been caused by 'soft markers' found at scans. I couldn't work out what was taking so long and put it down to the doctor being young and inexperienced. And, for a few hours, I'm convinced I've made a terrible mistake. Forcing my hand to my mouth to take the tablet was probably the hardest thing I have ever done. Limitations of the 18-20 week scan We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services. It was horrible. I've still had no cramps or bleeding so fingers crossed everything is ok I just couldn't believe I fell down the stairs, I can't remember the last time I ever did that! At the time the same thing had, exactly the same thing had happened to my friend a month before, and her scan was absolutely fine. And the doctor - because it was a doctor rather then just the, a sonographer or whatever the correct term is - was scanning my wife, and she hovered over the heart of the baby and said, 'Oh there's the heart, we'll come back to that'. The screen may be directly facing them or at an angle. The thing that I have a very strong memory of is this child's face in amazing detail. And so we talked about it euphemistically, never saying the word "research". It doesn't remove the guilt, but I don't know what else to do. And I'd been on the internet looking up all sorts of things and everything was so negative, it was very depressing, because I thought, 'Well, maybe they've made a mistake, or maybe it's something they can fix, I don't know'. As soon as we arrived, we were shown to this little room. I pray it's just her heart but I can't see anything else is wrong as I have been scanned by a consultant since I was 14 weeks and every time he has said everything looks okay and she is growing consistently. Though the 18-20 week scan can detect when certain parts of the baby's body have grown abnormally, it may not be possible for clinicians to identify why it has happened or make a firm diagnosis based on the scan alone. 20 week scans look for 11 different anomalies as a rule, however, indicators (markers) are not terribly reliable and in all the literature I found, the targets set for stonographers look like they only pick up around 50% or less of these variants. Specialist scans are performed in specialist fetal units and if clinicians feel that there might be problems scanning will be done up to 32 weeks. I returned to be told they wanted to scan me again, another internal to see exactly what was happening. My partner's face was lit up, seeing the baby for the first time. All women are offered a dating scan, and an 18- 20 week fetal anomaly ultrasound scan, in line with NICE and UK National Screening Committee recommendations. You will then be asked to raise your top to your chest and lower your skirt or trousers to your hips. How common is it for 2nd baby to come early..? Looked exactly like our two year old as a baby. It felt like a lifetime to reach our 12-week-scan. It was over. Three midwives came and went. All the hopes, dreams, and plans we made with our little bumps has been taken away from us. She advised I be referred to the EPU to be assessed. It went from bad, to worse, to worse, to dire, then to better. Desperately trying to hold onto the glimmer of hope we'd been given. So we went home, me to rest in an attempt to prevent miscarriage, my partner to reassure us both. It is as though our pain means we've earned the right to be taken more seriously. If an abnormality is confirmed or suspected, referral is usually required, although some obvious major fetal abnormalities, such as anencephaly, may not require a second opinion (this should be decided by local guidelines). I let out an animal scream and [wife] kind of leapt onto me on the bed. Sometimes it is difficult to get good views of a baby. Trying to carry on as normal, working and putting on a brave face. I wasn't ready to make a decision straight away, and I was told I could call them in the morning. You might be offered another test to find out for certain if your baby has one of the conditions. So had to come back in a week's time for a scan, which again is quite a common thing I found out. You have accepted additional cookies. I get terribly irritated by my close friends and family. The consultant at the time wasn't really that interested in that imagery. And it's like, I really wanted to see it and I didn't, and it was it was very mixed. To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account. The ultimate betrayal. And you know, we were laughing and joking. Saturday came. This article was amended on 24 November 2015 to anonymise the writer. At that point, I got very not upset but quite sort of strongly severe sort of with the people at the hospital saying, 'Look, you know, that's 24 hours, possibly a 48 hours' wait - that's not something that's tenable. But before he could speak, he, too, had broken down. You do not have to have the scan. And I, and, I felt the weight of deciding what to do about it. We had the baby cremated. You can change your cookie settings at any time. The scan will find about half (50%) of those babies who have heart defects. The midwife was on the verge of tears and I felt responsible. Good luck has not come easily over the past few years. I'm trying to understand because I haven't seen a 3-D scan, what it tells the parents? And also what the prognosis would mean for our two year old: now a very happy child, he would have a completely different childhood with such an ill sibling. After the triple test you stop thinking, you stop thinking that anything can go wrong. Smiling at myself and picturing me and Sam becoming parents. And then, so I went to my next scan, which was the 20-week abnormality scan, and we took our first child with us, I think he was 17 months old at the time. He looked fine. We'd just spent some time away on a, on a summer holiday and come back expecting to have this scan and be told, 'All fine. There was an extra digit on one of the hands. And they took me to another room and they explained that the baby had what they thought was ventriculomegaly or something. And you could see, where you should have a picture of 4 chambers, you could really see 2. I travelled to work that day feeling amazing. Again, we weren't understood. I think the whole experience has made me a pretty nasty person. So I was a bit ignorant of the kind of things, you know, what the scans were really doing - maybe it was, a bit na've I think. As two youngest siblings, we were both permanently stuck in the irresponsible, childish role. All my instincts were to protect my belly, yet here I was allowing someone to stick a huge needle into it. Had 34wk scan last week and all is well - of all the babies found to have a two vessel cord, was told less than 6% experience any growth issues etc. Not surprisingly, people aren't quite sure how to deal with me. She asked me how far gone I thought we were, and if I could have been mistaken. If you are not sure, you can contact them and ask. All my plans were beginning to fall down. But the closeness has remained after the drama has died down. No sort of questions about, 'Do you want to know whether it's a boy or a girl?' 'I was having nightmares and panic attacks. Perhaps because we are alone in this, it has brought my partner and me very close. He's now had the all clear and is wriggling round on . I had to stop myself from yanking out the needle. I could hardly breathe. But for those few days they were torture. I went home feeling crushed; Sam and I both felt helpless. I was given a leaflet and told to return four days later to see the consultant. What were babys measurements at 20 week scan? We went, I went in to the scanning room and they're quite bland facially anyway, whether everything's fine or not they just look at the screen to start off with and do measurements but I very quickly realised that the woman's demeanour wasn't, even for a bland face, was concerning. Some people we talked to had not had a 18-20-week scan, either because their babies' abnormalities had been detected by earlier diagnostic tests (e.g. Emma was 20 weeks' pregnant when a routine scan revealed that the baby she was expecting had Down's syndrome and heart problems. To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account. 'Soft markers'. Health professionals use the 18-20 week scan to examine the baby's size and position, and also to check if his/her brain, heart, lungs and other internal organs are developing as expected. In this information, the word we refers to the NHS service that provides screening. I would be put to sleep, and when I woke up I wouldn't be pregnant any more. Somehow, I walked from the sofa up to the bathroom and told my partner. I guess the morphine made it easier. 18-20 week scans provide clinicians with more information than earlier scans because by18 weeks a healthy baby should be larger and better developed. Sometimes women were told that the sonographer had found a 'marker' or sign of a chromosomal condition and had to wait for an amniocentesis to confirm the findings. And I, my husband and I both ran our own business at the time so we were desperate to get back and do some work, and things were going really well, so.. I think what everyone is saying is that most likely outcome is that there are no problems at all. Mumsnet carries some affiliate marketing links, so if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale (more details here). For example, you may be offered further tests that have a risk of miscarriage. These opinions do not represent the opinions of Tommys and are not advice from Tommy's. So at 20 weeks I went for my scan with my husband, with my daughter, to get our photographs. Eventually she got the measurements she wanted. So when that happened to us I really didn't worry, I thought, you know, it was literally the baby was in awkward position, they couldn't see the heart and that was why. My partner spent the weekend trying to convince me that things were OK. I tried not to sit still for too long, because then I became too aware of the little thing inside me. That he was small. It was interesting - well it was fantastic to see this fetus and to see this child that was yours that was horribly ill - but you didn't really get much opportunity to see that because the consultant was more about measurements and all sorts of blood flow and various other screens coming up. Your mind has closed to the possibility that there could be anything wrong. There was a very marked lack of amniotic fluid which made it difficult, not even for the scanners to see, that made the picture of the scan look very, very different. And I wish that I'd been told at that point, that somebody had actually turned round to me and said, 'Look, I'm sorry, but I think there's something very wrong. Never being able to look after himself. He sounded like a wild animal in pain, deep pain. It was positive, and I felt elated. The anomaly scan, also called the 20 week scan or mid-pregnancy scan, is used to detect pregnancy irregularities significant in diagnosis of any of the following conditions: In most instances no serious issue will be found during the scan and many parents-to be will come away knowing that all is progressing nicely and, perhaps, having found out . We'd sort of put those discussions to the back of our mind, and then all of a sudden there are other abnormalities so yeah it was a bit a bit of a shocker [laughs]. Some hospitals do offer earlier anomaly scans of the baby, but they will not show as much detail as scans performed between 18 and 20weeks. We must have had one before that as well, we must have had one before that, but it came back quite normal. So I trusted him. Sometimes doctors will wait to give the baby more time to develop and carry out repeat scans - this had confused several parents we talked to who had gone for repeat scans not knowing that the baby might have a problem. And I'm glad I did and she's glad she didn't. I think they perhaps could have done, if they had looked a bit closely. We've joined the grown-ups and we both feel very different. But they didn't. So that was it. It is extremely rare for these pregnancies to reach term as they typically spontaneously miscarry early in pregnancy. I didn't really know what that was. And she said that, you know, as the, if the baby did develop further there would probably be other problems with internal organs that weren't really that visible at that stage. I couldn't bear to see the baby and asked the midwife to take him away immediately. And, so they sent me home at that stage because they said the specialist wasn't available till the following day, which was awful. Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned. For example, some babies have a condition called open spina bifida, which affects the spinal cord. There was cause for concern. So we gave up and said we'd arrange the funeral ourselves. I had an appointment with my consultant 2 days later, and again he said, you know, 'Very common - shouldn't worry about it too much, you know, if, the problem is if they find anything else wrong'. He started to scan me with a cold expression, then told me, "it didn't look good" and that "my womb looked raggedy". It was probably all right but hadn't had any fluid in it at the moment. They sort of drew some diagrams, and they said, 'But we need to refer you to a specialist to confirm the diagnosis'. And I remember, the first thing I remember when something might be wrong, was I saw, I finally, we finally saw an image of the skull on the screen, and there appeared to be a sort of black hole shape in the middle. And I can just remember flashing a look at you as if to say, 'Have I made a mistake here somewhere? That was an extremely difficult day. As I waited for the doctor back on the EPU unit. We were convinced everything would be OK. Last reviewed July 2017. And I went for, I went for a normal 12-week scan, at my local hospital and everything, they said everything was fine, there was no problem. She endured many agonising rounds of scans and tests, and unfortunately met with some unhelpful attitudes from some healthcare professionals. It was another consultant, who said, "I'm afraid I have some bad news - your baby has Down's syndrome."