I Made A Decision

Yesterday I was thinking about my results from my triple blood tests and as it had been a whole week since I'd had them done and not heard anything then surely I was in for some good news. Then the midwife phoned and told me although I was in the clear for neural defects like spina bifida, I was high risk for downs with a score of 1:110

I wasn't all that phased, I had honestly been expecting it to be higher. I'm 44 so on age alone my risk is 1:35 and I have Downs in my family, other factors taken into account are wether you smoke (I don't) and if you are overweight (I'm not)

Taking a step back to the beginning of this pregnancy, it wasn't planned and with two little girls under 5 yrs one of my first thoughts was this is going to be tough. Then my second thought was, if there is anything wrong with this baby then it's going to be too tough. So straight away in my head I wanted to know if there was going to be a problem.

Then when the time came for the blood tests I'd my feelings towards this baby had changed somewhat. It didn't bother me that it was going to be tough looking after 3 little ones, and it bothered me less that I wouldn't be able to cope if there was anything wrong. I've never worried about it before, I always knew that if I had a disabled baby I would cope. Some people feel that way and some people don't. I would never judge anyone that felt differently and I guess that's why I had doubted myself at the start.

I went ahead with the blood tests because the midwife told me that if the results came back high risk I would get full support. That's what I had today. I went to the hospital for counselling with my OH. The lady we saw explained everything in detail, how they work out the tests, what each part means, and of course, the statistical value of my results, which she thought were not so bad too. She didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know (apart from the hospital statistics for miscarriage after amnio which were 1:200 not 1:100 as I'd assumed) but just hearing someone talk through everything methodically really helped sort out the confusion in my head.

I went in thinking that my chances of having a baby with DS was 1:110 against the chances of mc from amnio at 1:100 was a no brainer, don't test. But finding out the new figure did make me think again. However, what I really needed to think about was why I wanted to know, and how badly I needed to know.

The midwife told me to think of it as two worst case scenarios and way up which I would consider the one I really couldn't live with.

1. If I didn't have the amnio I could possibly have a child with Downs Syndrome.

2. If I had an amnio I could possibly miscarry a perfectly fine little baby.

The choice suddenly seemed easy. I really couldn't live with scenario 2. I also realised that no matter what, I couldn't terminate this baby. So now that was straight in my mind I decided I could live with not knowing for sure if this baby did actually have DS. I doesn't matter anymore, I'm not worried. I can happily spend the rest of this pregnancy knowing that there is a very small risk of a DS a baby.

NB: From now on I'm going to keep all the detailed babystuff to my pregnancy journal but I will still keep my readers here updated on the important stuff.