Baby #2 Update

Monday morning (March 14^th) we went into the specialist to do the first trimester screening.  Given my age and the fact that Alexa was healthy, I had absolutely no concerns going into it.  Mostly I decided to have it done so I could have the opportunity to see our little one.  The ultrasound was great!  Compared to the first one I had at about 8 weeks, the baby had grown so much!  You could now make out the body of a baby, head, arms, and all!  The baby was fairly cooperative and it only took the sonographer 20 minutes or so to get the picture she needed.  She mentioned that while it was early (12 weeks) she would check the anatomy as well.  This was definitely a surprise for me since normally you don’t find out until 20 weeks.  Of course we wanted to know!  Luckily the baby was cooperative again and she was able to clearly see that it was a BOY!  While she wouldn’t commit 100%, it was pretty obvious that there was a little something there.  Neither of us had strong feelings either way, so long as it was healthy…

Thursday morning (today) I received a message that they had the results of the screening and to call back.  I thought nothing of it since the nurse told me they wouldn’t leave the results on a message.  So I called back fully expecting to hear that we were low risk.  She started off by telling me the risk of down syndrome (trisomy 21) based on my age, 1 in 762.  Then the heartbreaking news that the risk after the blood work had increased to 1 in 306, a huge jump and also above the cut-off for what would be considered low risk (1 in 310).  While we are just barely above the cut-off, we are still at high risk that he might have down syndrome, which no mother wants to hear.  I barely managed to keep it together on the phone (at work) and pretty much tuned out every word she said to me afterwards.  After I hung up the phone I frantically tried to pull up something on the Internet that would reassure me although I don’t think my mind was in the right state.  My next instinct was to call Brian and let him know.  I could barely get the words out but eventually managed to.  Being the optimist that he is, he didn’t seem concerned at all, simply saying that we’d deal with whatever happened.  Well, that wasn’t the reassurance I was looking for! 

I managed to pull myself together to go back into work (although I contemplated leaving and drowning myself in my sorrows the rest of the day).  I continued to do more research online and it has seemed to give me some reassurance.  I’ve found that there is a high percentage of false positive results for the first trimester screening.  Plus if you flip those odds around, we also have a 305 out of 306 chance that he doesn’t have down syndrome.  I also did some research on the risk based on age and the 1 in 762 figure they gave me seems to be a little low.  Everything I’ve seen for a 28 year old is more in the 1 in 1,100 range, so now I’m questioning the accuracy of the entire test.  I’ve also been reading some pretty inspiring stories of mothers of babies with down syndrome and I’m seeing that it may be one of the greatest things to ever happen to us.

I have a high level or level 2 ultrasound scheduled for mid April at which time they’ll look for other indicators that he might have down syndrome (flattened face, shorter limbs, hole in the wall of the heart, etc.).  This is again just a screening test and if we want to know for absolute certain whether he does or doesn’t have it, we’d have to do an amniocentesis.  We have both agreed that regardless, we will love him with all of our hearts so having this procedure won’t be necessary.  Not to mention that it carries a risk (while small) of miscarriage.  

I have gone through so many emotions today, shock, sadness, anger, blame, worry, but ultimately I think I’m finally starting to reach acceptance.  Acceptance that whatever happens is meant to be and that as Brian said, we’ll deal with it.  There’s nothing that I can do to change things now so there’s no point dwelling on it.  We can only pray for the best, whatever that may be.