What A Difference

The final results for my prenatal screening test to screen for birth defects such as down syndrome, trisectomy 18, etc came this week.  And what a big difference it is this time as compared to the results we got when we did the same screening test two years ago when I was pregnant with Chloe.

The result we got with Chloe was a "screen positive" with a risk assessment of 1 in 130.  That meant Chloe had a 1 out of 130 chance of having a form of birth defect such as down syndrome.  That was compared to a "normal" assessment of 1 in 384 for a woman giving birth at 34.  That shook us out of our seats.  We saw it as our chance of having a baby with a birth defect having grown 3 times the normal.  We were so disturbed by the result that we ended up opting to take a somewhat evasive procedure called a CVS to find out the exact chromosomal makeup of the baby to make sure whether or not she did or did not have a birth defect.  Fortunately, praise the Lord, Buddha, Allah, or whoever is watching over us from above, Chloe's chromosomal makeup came out perfectly normal.  All 46 chromosomes are there.  No more.  No less. We don't know what we would've done if we were to find out she did have "a problem".  We felt, and to this day still feel, very fortunate that we didn't have to ponder such a situation.

Fast forward 2 years later, the result for this pregnancy is a "screen negative" with a risk assessment of 1 in 40,000.  That's right, 1 in 40,000!  The "normal" for a woman my age is 1 in 200.  What a relief it was when we saw the result.  No more early scare in this pregnancy like we had with Chloe.  This is not to say we are completely out of the woods and the baby is guaranteed healthy and normal.  But because our risk assessment in so low, we do not have to undergo the evasive CVS procedure.  But then again, because we are not doing the CVS, we do not know definitively that the baby is normal.  1 in 40,000 is still a chance.  It's just a chance that is small enough to let us temporarily breathe a sigh of relief and not worry about this until the baby is born.  Please I pray to the Lord, Buddha, Allah, or whoever is watching over us from above, please let our baby be healthy and normal.