"First Scan Appointment"

We arrived around 15 minutes before our appointment and had no trouble checking in at the main reception. We had to then take a ticket the Scan Reception where we'd see the Sonographer. We were a little surprised to see around 4 women sitting in this reception chatting - it wasn't a particularly busy reception and we couldn't understand why it would be so heavily staffed. We only waited around 10 minutes for this and the Sonographer was excellent.

We were then asked to sit in the waiting room but we weren't told what this was for. I was then called around 15 minutes later to be weighed and have my height taken. Again we were a little surprised that this took 2 nurses. We where then asked to sit in the waiting room and wait for to have our Green Papers returned. We waited for over and hour and a half. There were other couples waiting too. Being pregnant I was absolutely starving and I could hear other women saying the same around me. I had breakfast before I left but it was well past lunch time by this point.

When we asked reception about what we were waiting on they just said that you're waiting on the midwife but they weren't particularly helpful. It was nearing nearly 3 hours and we went to the reception and just asked if we could have our papers to go. The reception wasn't particularly friendly towards and didn't seem to have any empathy for our situation - they said you should expect to be here for 2 hours. The invitation letter didn't say this, no-one kept us informed about what we were waiting on and why, and in the end we were there nearly 3 and half hours. The reception then just said go if you want to, in quite an unfriendly tone.

We waited to see the midwife in the end for what was a pointless chat as there was nothing to discuss about our scan, everything was fine and our due date was as expected.

We're now considering looking at other hospitals if this is what our first experience was like, the receptionist obviously had no understanding about how this may well be a very important day for some mothers to be.