First Trimester | Pregnancy Scan

Are you scared about your 12 week scan? Is the anxiety kicking in? Are you excited about finding out your due date? All of your pregnancy scans will be filled with a whole lot of emotions.  Good and bad.  But to be quite frank pregnant people are filled with a lot of emotions anyway, but this is a special type of emotion.  If you feel me.  This post will give you an insight into what to expect at your first pregnancy scan.  Ill also tell you a bit about my first scan and how I was feeling.  If you want to learn about a pregnancy ultrasound scan and my experience keep reading. 

Process of Pregnancy Ultrasound

I feel like ill begin my post by detailing how exactly a pregnancy ultrasound is carried out, just to give you an insight.  In case you didn’t know!  An ultrasound scan is a test that uses high frequency sound waves to image the development of your baby.  Just thought I’d be scientific, you know!  A pregnancy ultrasound is a painless scan.  If you’re anything like me and worry about the slightest thing, I think this detail is important.  You’re welcome.  The only thing you may feel is slight discomfort as pressure will be applied to your tummy, but hey ho you get to see your tiny little bundle of joy.  Writing this blog post is taking me back to when I was doing my Health and Social Care and Science A-levels.  Oh those were the days.  A 12 week ultrasound scan is performed to confirm your pregnancy, find out if you’re having one or two babies and estimate your due date.  Just a quick note, they say that if you have a full bladder the clearer the ultrasound image will be.  I don’t know the science behind it, but I was sat there thinking there’s not a chance I will be able to sit with a full bladder for more than a minute.  Rightly so because all pregnant women need to pee twice as much as they did before they were pregnant, if not more.  Never mind the fact that the Sonographer was going to be applying a lot of pressure onto my bladder during the scan!  I would have literally wet myself! No joke!     

Firstly, the Sonographer will ask you to lie down on an examination bed in full view of the ultrasound screen, so that you can see, obviously.  The Sonographer will then place freezing cold ultrasound gel on your lower abdomen.  I mean ice cold gel.  I was feeling very nervous at this stage because of what was to come.  I was ultimately thinking is my baby ok, surely that would put anyone’s worries and nerves through the roof.  After the ultrasound gel is placed onto the abdomen, the Sonographer places the scanner onto your belly.  I learnt that the “scanner” as I call it is actually called a transducer.  This is something I forgot from my science A-levels, woops.  The transducer is moved all over your abdomen to capture images onto the ultrasound screen of your baby.  Once the images are clear the Sonographer is able to print you out a number of scan photos that you won’t be able to stop looking at for hours on end and you will cherish for the rest of your life.  My first baby scan photo is currently in a beautiful little frame placed on our fire place, the heart of our home.   

Confirmation of Pregnancy

I mentioned briefly above why an ultrasound is carried out.  Well I thought I would sub-section all the reasons why with pretty little headings.  A 12 week ultrasound scan is carried out to verify that you are in actual fact pregnant.  The majority of the time when a pregnancy test is positive it’s actually true.  So don’t be worrying about that and you’ve probably taken numerous pregnancy tests to confirm that you are pregnant.  Like I did!  However, I have to mention that in a very rare case, someone may have a false positive result from a home pregnancy test.  A false positive result is when a pregnancy test shows a positive result when you aren’t actually pregnant.  However, this is a very rare case.

To take you guys all the way back to our first scan when I was waiting on the professional confirmation I stared blankly at the black and white screen, waiting ever so patiently.  However, my patience very quickly started to wear thin.  I was all prepped for the scan with the gel on my tummy waiting for some news with Corey sat beside me holding my hand, ever so tightly.  When the Sonographer realised that she hadn’t typed my name in, and my name isn’t a very easy one to spell, so I had to spell it out for her (which I have to do for most people) and when she typed it in I realised it was wrong.  But I never said anything because I just wanted to find out about my baby already.  To this day, on my scan photos my name is spelt wrong.  It’s nothing serious; it’s just one of those things.  When the Sonographer was eventually ready and had placed the transducer on my tummy our baby was visible on the screen.  I could clearly see a little baby but I was sat with my heart in my mouth thinking does it have a heartbeat as the first trimester is the most crucial one of the three.  When I could see/hear my baby’s tiny little heart beating, I was so relieved and all my worries just disappeared.  I just couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.  I was mesmerised by my tiny little baby on the screen moving around and kicking like nothing normal (which I couldn’t feel at this stage) and to realise that it was my little baby on the screen inside my belly is a sensational feeling.  For the millisecond that I looked around to Corey, all I could see was his smile from ear to ear, he was sat grinning like a Cheshire cat.  The love and happiness just filled our hearts.  It was definitely a moment Corey and I will remember forever.   

Single or Twins

What are you hoping for one baby or two? The midwife asked.  Definitely just one for now I replied.  I put my hands up to the women out there who have two or more babies.  Honestly, all of you deserve a medal and a good pampering session to relax.  You go girls!  I mean don’t get me wrong, if I was having more than one baby I would have been totally over the moon too. 

Estimated Due Date (EDD)

I say EDD because all health professionals use this synonym for your due date.  I might as well prepare you!  At your antenatal checkups you have to become familiar with a tonne of synonyms, and fast! Let me tell you, you won’t remember half of them!  Finding out your due date is an exciting part at the beginning of your pregnancy.  You’ll be able to know exactly what month your baby is likely to be due in, how exciting.  If you’re anything like me, when I was younger thinking about when I would have children I always thought that I would have planned to conceive in a specific month so that my baby’s birthday would be in the perfect month, like June.  Oh how that is so unrealistic! 

Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty about this sub-section.  The midwife will ask you when you think your last period was.  Trying to recall my last period actually proved some difficultly for me because I never kept track of my period, therefore the date of my last period was a complete and utter random guess.  The midwife will normally perform a few checks and record a couple of measurements of your little baby to find out your little ones EDD.  My due date that my doctor gave me was perfect in comparison to my baby’s measurements.  Basically, my baby was measuring the correct length for the stage that I was at in my pregnancy.  However, the due date that your midwife will give you isn’t always perfect as you might have your baby early or you might be overdue.  Your baby will decide when it’s ready to come out.  My baby’s EDD was the 13^th November 2017, however my little one was overdue 5 days and was born on the 18^th November 2017.  I was induced so my little one had to no choice but to come out, she had been keeping us waiting long enough.  My labour and birth blog will be up soon, so keep an eye out for that if you want to know all about my induction story.         

If you’re reading this and you remember your first pregnancy scan, and want to share your story I would love to hear from you.  Also if you’re first pregnancy scan is just around the corner and you need some more advice pop me a message straight to my email nowwerethreeblog@gmail.com or comment below.  If you enjoyed reading all about my first pregnancy scan please leave me a feedback below and subscribe for more posts.  Thank you so much.

P.S just a helpful tip, remember to take a urine sample to every appointment!

Now were three blogger x