I know I rant about two-tier healthcare a lot (as in, it already exists in the NHS), so I’ll keep this reasonably short: after our pregnancy scan earlier this week, we had a chat with the midwife about the various tests designed to make sure your baby’s healthy. The biggie, it seems, is the 20-week scan: it’s when you check to see that the foetus is developing normally.
The room in which we had our 12-week scan was plastered with posters explaining why the 20-week scan is so important, so – being good little patients – we asked the midwife about it. Should we get it? Yes, she said. But not here.
It turns out that the NHS doesn’t do 20-week scans in Glasgow unless there’s already reason to be worried – something the midwife says is daft, dangerous and various other things beginning with “d”. Inevitably it’s because of cost-cutting.
So here’s your choice: if you can afford to go private, you can get a scan (which, incidentally, isn’t performed by a mere sonographer; no, it’s performed by a proper doctor. In this case, the doctor who’s a consultant at, er, the maternity ward that employs the midwife we were speaking to). If you can’t, you don’t get scanned. Simple.
Apparently the 20-week scans will be reinstated next year. Which is good news for skint mums-to-be this year.
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Vic’s doctors have strongly advised her not to risk another pregnancy. It’s good advice, but we do disagree with their reasoning: they think she shouldn’t risk the problems inevitably caused by pregnancy; we think she shouldn’t risk the problems avoidably caused by pregnancy but inevitably caused by NHS fuck-ups. We know that all the problems were both foreseeable and preventable (not just foreseeable but foreseen, in fact), and we know how to go about having a second child with all the necessary precautions in place and not much risk. But we also know that it can only be done privately, because that’s the only way you can guarantee that the doctors will actually stick to a plan.
One example: Vic was brought into hospital what we then suspected and now know was at least two weeks late, in order to fit around her obstetricians’ Summer holiday.