At 19 weeks and 5 days we went for our morphology scan. Although we were nervous, we were also hoping that if everything looked good during this scan that our risk of downs would be decreased by 4.

The first stage of the scan was done by a girl who was new to the practice, so she had another more senior lady there to watch/assist her. They were both lovely and from the beginning things were looking very positive. Everything was looking very normal and healthy. They had warned me that because of my weight they might not be able to see the baby’s nasal bone or see the heart properly and that I may have to come back at a later date to get those looked at.  During the scans of my last pregnancy, I became aware that my weight meant that ultrasounds were not as clear and I got upset several times when I read on ultrasound reports that the view was affected by my weight. However as soon as they started doing the ultrasound they commented on how clear everything was and they actually did manage to get a good, clear look at the heart and nasal bone, all of which looked good. So I guess baby was in a good position, even though the placenta is anterior which usually means difficult ultrasounds. Weird.

So after they assured me that everything looked perfect, the doctor who did our amnio last time Dr Carmody came in and had a look too. As he started looking, he let out a “hmmmmm” and seemed to want to investigate something. We both thought he was going to give us some bad news! He went on to say “well that looks normal” and then kept looking at different things and eventually said “This isn’t a good baby, this is a GREAT baby”. We were so relieved. He looked in detail at the heart and how the blood was flowing through it, at the different chambers etc and it all looked perfect.  He went on to say that due to the ultrasound being so good, that he could reduce our risk of Downs Syndrome to about 1 in 800. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy and relieved we were that the baby looked so healthy.

This was a huge milestone for us and at this point I started to believe that maybe everything was going to be ok.