Jo
from the United Kingdom

Jo is pregnant with her third child, due in November 2001.  She lives in England with her husband and two sons ages 6 and 3.  As "Mom's Helper" is a site based in America, we thought it would be interesting to parents to read the differences and similarities between the two countries.  Especially as a large portion of  our readers are in the military and are often stationed in Europe.

Mom:  My first question is, what is the recommendation for first Dr's appointments?
Jo:  There are regional/practice differences. I can get an update on that when I get all the bumpf. When I rang the doctors, they said a midwife would get back to me, which she did, 2 days later. She said she would come to my house at 8 weeks for a booking appointment.

Mom: what is bumft?

Jo:  Paperwork.  Each practice only normally serves the community within about a 1 - 2 mile radius. I have no idea how many households that is - I'll have to find out what it is round here. Don't forget we're quite tightly packed in. At our practice we have about 8 doctors, 3 nurses, 3 midwives, 3 health visitors and about 10 admin staff.

Mom:  How do you determine if you are pregnant?

Jo:  I used a shop bought pregnancy test. Most people do and the doctors don't usually bother to do their own test. I was offered classes (I think about the last 10 weeks or so of pregnancy) for my first but not for my second, because I suppose they think if we want to be reminded of anything we'll ask!

Most people are seen under the National Health, but may use Private Health Insurance for the actual delivery. I think the appointments were monthly until about 6 months, then two weekly.

Jo:  I'll call it a boy because - well it may just be a leg bone, but that's no fun is it. It varies from region to region, but our hospital won't discuss the sex of the baby at any of the scans.

At 12 weeks pregnant he's 55mm from the top of his head to his bottom. His nuchal fold was measured to determine the statistical risk of Downs Syndrome. With my age (40) the risk factor is 1 in 55 - but with the measurements taken into account the risk factor dropped to 1 in 454. Still no guarantee, but the risk is far less than that of the amniocentesis which is a 1 in 100 chance of miscarriage.
I have an appointment with the Consultant in two weeks time and my 20 week scan on 21 June.

Jo: I had an appointment last week - only for a heartbeat listen though.

Mom: How did it go?

Jo: They checked my blood pressure and urine, and then listened to the heartbeat. I was a bit worried because I'd had a few ciders on holiday and not rested much. I hadn't felt much movement and I panicked when they couldn't find a heartbeat, but it was just that the batteries on their scanner were low!

Mom: Well then, here is a good question for you. What is the attitude of drinking while pregnant there?

Jo: In general there's not much attention paid to drinking while pregnant in particular. There's a lot of emphasis on 'to keep healthy, try to stick to no more than 2 units a day', but I don't think there's a problem with pregnant alcoholics! There are the odd ones that drink or smoke, but smoking pregnant women seem to draw much more attraction than drinking.

Mom: Here they are very against drinking/smoking while pregnant. In our training we were told "NO" period. But recently it seems to have slacked off a little to a glass of wine or one beer occasionally is ok. But you have a point in that here it is a bigger problem here, and there are a lot of babies born with birth defects due to it.  I would be very interested in comparing the statistics between America and the UK.

20 week old - June 21, 2001 -  Healthy and developing well -

October 25, 2001 - Jo is about ready to POP!

October 31, 2001 - SHE'S HERE!!!