I had a quick appointment with my OB yesterday. He did a super quick ultrasound and said yes, I have a low-lying placenta, yes, I need to be on bedrest for a couple weeks. See you in 3 weeks.
Then I had an appointment with a maternal-fetal specialist today. That went - interesting.
He showed me my blood results in terms of the risk. My risk came back for down's syndrome with a risk of 1/150, with the cut off being 1/250 for a negative, but said that for my age, the risk of 1/150 was pretty good. Then he showed me my results for trisomy 18 and the risk was 1/10 with the cut-off being 1/100 for a negative. I was very concerned and said as much to the dr. He said "Yes, we like to see a higher number, but this part of the test has a pretty high false positive." He said that I was in between genetic tests right now - I was too far along for CVS and not far enough for amnio. Trisomy 18 is otherwise known as Edward's syndrome, and most of the babies born with it die in utero. Those that make it to birth usually die shortly after birth. It is basically not compatible with life.
He said that he would do an ultrasound today to check for any problems, but it was a little early to see anything definite in terms of markers for Trisomy 21 (Down's Syndrome) or Trisomy 18. So he did the ultrasound and he measured the head and said that it was the right size, and he could see the heart and there was a normal heartbeat (155 beats per minute), he could see all arms and legs and they were the right length, he could see the bladder, and the stomach, and he could see a nasal bone. At the end, he said that he didn't see any markers for either trisomy, particularly trisomy 21, but repeated that it was still a little early to see anything definitively. He told me that I had some options - I could come back in 3 weeks and get an amnio. I could come back in 3 weeks and have another ultrasound to look for markers, and another one at 20 weeks for markers. Or I could decide to do no further testing/screening.
I asked if I could do an ultrasound at 16 weeks and then decide after that whether I wanted to do an amnio and he said yes, we could do that, so that is the plan right now. Although the more I think about it, I think that I'm probably going to have the amnio no matter what, so that we will know for sure.
So at this point, I'll have the ultrasound/amnio in three weeks. I won't get results from the amnio for at least 10 days after that. So I have over a month before I will know whether this baby has any genetic problems, and at this point, according to my blood test, there is a 10% chance that there is. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't worried. Really worried.
-Andie (12 weeks 6 days)
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