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As the sonographer paused the ultrasound scan and zoomed in on the picture of her unborn baby, first-time mum Sarah Radford and her husband Tom couldn’t have been happier.

Like thousands of parents-to-be each year, they decided to find out the sex of their baby at their 20-week scan and despite both sides of their family giving birth to sons first, to their surprise the sonographer pointed out all the features of a baby girl.

Clutching the ultrasound picture of her daughter and imagining the little girl her baby would become, Sarah, 30, hit the shops.

Picking out pink, girlie outfits and creating a nursery with pink floral wall stickers, bedding, curtains and lampshades, she spent over £1,000.

But when Sarah finally gave birth at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital in January, after a five-day labour which ended in a caesarean, she watched the colour drain from 29-year-old Tom’s face - their longed-for baby girl was in fact a boy.

Sarah, a primary school teacher who lives in Norwich, says: “Tom’s face dropped as though something was wrong. The hospital staff all knew we were expecting a girl but nobody thought to check – it was Tom who noticed he was in fact a boy.”

In the drama of the operating theatre, where Sarah’s surgery still had to be completed, it was 15 minutes before the sex of their baby was confirmed and Sarah learnt she had indeed given birth to a boy.

She says: “It was such a shock. The sonographer had said she was 100% certain we were having a girl and even stopped the ultrasound image on the screen and pointed it all out to show us. We couldn’t believe it.”

After Sarah was moved to the postnatal ward, news of the “mistake” spread among the mums and midwives, who laughingly congratulated her on her new arrival. But Sarah wasn’t quite so amused.

“One mum on the ward came over and congratulated me. I asked her how she knew what had happened,” says Sarah. “She said a midwife had told her.

"I felt like I’d lost a child and I needed to deal with it privately but there was no confidentiality at all.

“I’d imagined the ballet lessons and the periods talk with my daughter. I felt like I’d lost something yet my beautiful, healthy baby was beside me.

"No one at the hospital asked whether I was OK – the first person to ask me how I was feeling about the mistake was a health worker during a home visit weeks later.”

Still in shock, Sarah left hospital when her son, who was unnamed for five days because the couple had never even considered boys’ names, was two days old. He had to spend his first night at home in a pink Moses basket.

Sarah says: “We got home at 1am so there was no time to buy an alternative. Everything I’d bought was pink or lilac. We had just one item of clothing that was neutral and I didn’t feel like I’d bought him anything at all. It felt like I hadn’t given birth to the baby I expected to.”

Like Sarah and Tom, a fuel injection engineer, the couple’s family responded to the unexpected delivery with mixed emotions.

“My mum screamed down the phone and my father-in-law almost dropped his cup of tea,” says Sarah. “My mother-in-law really understood how I was feeling, and she had to mourn the loss of a granddaughter.”

The day after she left hospital, despite still recovering from the major surgery of her caesarean, Sarah and Tom went straight to Toys R Us, where they began to replace their “daughter’s” pink clothes and bedding with much-needed blue instead.

“The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was pack away ‘her’ clothes,” says Sarah. “Tom and I both cried. It was such a strange feeling.”

By the end of the week, Sarah had named her son Ryan but it has taken almost six months for her to deal with the shock and disappointment the mistaken scan result caused, and only now is she starting to enjoy motherhood and put the ordeal behind her.

“I can look back on it now and see the funny side but at the time it was very hard,” she says. “It’s really hard to explain to people how I was feeling.”

Sarah decided not to pursue the lapse of patient confidentiality at the hospital, preferring to put the incident behind her, and instead sought comfort from parenting websites such as babycentre.co.uk where she found other mums sharing their feelings about “gender disappointment”.

“It isn’t a recognised medical term but is very real,” says Sarah. “Lots of mums go through it and it helped me to deal with what happened. I feel lucky I haven’t had postnatal depression as a result.”

Sarah says she will still find out the sex of her unborn baby next time. “I like to plan ahead and I want to be able to bond with my child,” she says. “Next time we’ll have a private 3D scan too and triple-check.

“I still feel guilty that when Ryan was born, my first thought was, ‘Where’s my little girl?’ but I’m so excited to have a boy now.”