At my regular OB check-up on January 3rd (week 18), I decided to go ahead and do the 2nd trimester blood screening test. They took one vial of blood and said that they would call me with the results and I didn't think much more about it. The next week (week 19) they called to let me know that my screens came back at an "increased risk" for Down Syndrome and referred me to a genetic screening specialist at Baylor Hospital. She said that the results were calculated based on my age, the gestational age of the baby, protein levels and some other factors. The only other information they could give me was that my risk factor was 1/348 and my MMS was 1/10.
I called the Fetal Care Center at Baylor Hospital and took the first available appointment for the following week. In the meantime, I did lots of Internet research and learned that the screening tests can be very unreliable, there are lots of false positives, and that most of the time it is nothing at all. I knew that they would do a Level II ultrasound and look for "markers" of Down Syndrome, then we would go from there. We were also looking forward to finding out the gender of the baby during the sonogram. Stuart and I tried not to worry about the screen results and we were just looking forward to a detailed sonogram of our baby and finding out whether we were having another boy or girl!
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