What Are The Odds?

I wasn't sure I was going to blog about this. I wasn't really sure we were going tell anyone about the stressful issues we've been having with this pregnancy. We just talked to my dad the other day for the first time about anything that could be wrong. But, as a sort of stress therapy, I feel like I need to just get it all out. Here's what we've been dealing with for the past few months.

On top on my already high risk for preeclampsia and pre-term labor my routine 1st trimester blood work came back abnormal. Specifically, it indicated a 1 in 52 chance of having a baby with downs syndrome. So what do you do with that information? You cry, and you wait, and you get your second trimester blood work done.

It came back with a 1 in 15 risk of downs. That pretty much did it for me. I will have a downs syndrome baby. Or will I? The additional part of my blood work was a relatively new test called Maternity 21. It is a very sensitive test for chromosome abnormalities 13, 18, and 21 (which is downs syndrome) and is only offered to moms that are at risk. That test is supposed to be 99.2% accurate and it came back negative. So on the emotional scale I was all over the place. I was offered an amniocentesis to be 100% sure but I declined it. It's just not worth the 1:400 chance of miscarriage for me to be .8% sure. But I did accept the offer for genetic counseling and a high risk detailed ultrasound at The University of California San Diego.

That appointment was on Thursday. The genetic counselor was very nice and spent an hour going over our family histories and talking to us about risks and odds. She actually recalculated our risk for having a baby with downs syndrome at 1:1,050 since the Mat21 was negative. Wow. I felt so much better. Then we had the ultrasound. Baby girl looks absolutely wonderful... except for one little thing.

The tech left and went to get the doctor who explained to us that our peanut has echogenic bowel. Basically her bowel just showed up really bright in the ultrasound. That's an indicator for downs. But it's also an indicator for a few other things. Maybe she swallowed some blood (harmless) early in the pregnancy. But I didn't have any bleeding. Maybe there was an infection that could cross the placenta, but I was never sick. The genetic counselor came back in and recalculated our risk again. 1:350. They offered me the amnio again for peace of mind. Brian and I just looked at each other and knew it wasn't worth it. No.

The doctor made it clear, to put things into perspective, that if my initial blood work had come back with a 1:350 risk they wouldn't offer any further testing, counseling, or amnio because they don't consider that risk high enough. Ok. I feel a little better. But still scared.

It doesn't matter. We love this little girl already, and so what if she has downs syndrome? But what would have caused the abnormal blood work in the first place? Apparently there are trends that show that when certain hormones are elevated (the ones that were high in my labs) you end up with a greater risk for preeclampsia and preterm labor. Which we knew anyway. I guess we just didn't know how high risk I was.

With all this evidence I will be followed closely at the placenta clinic at UCSD to make sure baby girl is growing and getting enough nutrients and oxygen. At any point my placenta could just stop working and she will stop growing. I could go into preterm labor, my already high blood pressure could get completely out of control and put me on bed rest. So many things could still complicate this pregnancy beyond my control. And we still don't know if she will have downs syndrome or not. At this point I don't even care. I don't care if she has low set ears. I don't care if she is short and maybe walks a little funny. If she is healthy and full term I will gladly take her in my arms and love her no matter what her chromosomes say.