First of all I'd just like to say that as much as I complain about my local hospital they don't rip me off. I've NEVER had to pay for any ultrasound for any reason and I don't think I've even seen any facilities for people to pay ... I'm in NSW also and age etc never has anything to do with it. You're just never asked - give the medicare card and away you go.

Anyway! I'm glad though now that we have a healthcare card we can go to our local medical imaging place because they bulk bill if you have a h/c card which is awesome cos they give you the films 5 minutes later to take home with you.

I had the scan with Jovi. Was never a consideration in my mind - mainly because I wanted to see her so badly. It's certainly personal choice though and not something that is 100% accurate. My SIL and bro had one with their first and were told at repeated screenings that the baby had downs and a heap of other complications - one final scan before they had to make the aweful and stressful decision that they would terminated they saw yet ANOTHER specialist who ran all the same tests, rang the other doctos and it turned out that the machines weren't calibrated right!!!! Abi is now 3 and there's not a damn thing wrong with her.

So I guess even if you did it and they gave you a bad report, I would certainly have 2 or 3 other opinions before I started thinking about anything else.

We'll prob have the scan with this one but at the moment all I am thinking about is our u/s we're having on the 3rd to make sure the baby is well and growing (since we miscarried a few months ago). Time seems to be going VERY slowly ...