Pregnancy and childbirth in the UK - our experience
Heath care The health care during your pregnancy is free under the NHS – National Health Service. You will regularly (but not too often) see a midwife, who will do an interview, check your blood pressure, test your urine sample, measure your bump and a few times refer you to get your basic blood tests. If everything seems fine, you will most probably not even see a doctor for the whole pregnancy. The frequency of midwife appointments increases towards the end of the pregnancy. Note that you are not examined gynecologically during your appointments. Scans are done twice – around week 12 and half-way through your pregnancy. If you have pregnancy experiences from another country, you will notice some tests that are routinely offered to pregnant women there, might not be offered here, which is due to costs they would create for the NHS. One of them is GBS, for which pregnant women in most European countries are routinely tested towards the end of their pregnancy. You can arrange to h...