Antenatal ultrasounds are very good at picking up a number of conditions in your baby that may or may not require surgery when your baby is born.
Although ultrasound is not able to pick up all of the abnormalities that babies may have when they are born it does pick up a significant number of them. Once you know that there is a potential problem with your baby you may want to get as much as information as possible as to what you might expect in the time around the baby’s birth and what is likely to happen thereafter.
We provide an antenatal counselling service which aims to be able to give you as much of this information as possible so that you know exactly what to expect. The sorts of conditions that we are likely to know about before your baby’s birth include abdominal wall defects such as gastroschisis or exomphalos, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, blockages of the bowel such as duodenal atresia or small bowel atresia and a number of cysts in the body such as cysts in the lung and chest, in the abdomen or even cysts arising from the ovaries. We can also organise a visit to our Grace ward which is our Newborn intensive care nursery so you have the opportunity to familiarise yourself with the surroundings.
Your obstetrician will let you know if he or she thinks it is appropriate to come to meet someone from Paediatric surgery before your child is born.