Reply to How worried to be about birth defects with advanced maternal age?

Forum Index » Trying to Conceive (TTC)

Reply to "How worried to be about birth defects with advanced maternal age?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I had my children at 33, 35 and 39. When I was pregnant with my first (he is an adult now), I had some kind of test for CF, I think, that also showed false positives for Down's. My doctor had warned me of this flaw in the test, but she said the only way to be sure was to have an amnio. I did, and it was perfectly normal. During the process, the geneticist asked us lots and lots of questions about our histories and determined that the only thing to test for was Down's. With the latter 2, I chose not to have an amnio and, as a result, had no genetic testing other than an enhanced ultra-sound. Children have no anomalies.

Here's what really sticks in my mind, though. I had read somewhere - and I'm making these specific numbers up for illustrative purposes, but the spans are similar - that a 39-year-old woman has a 1 in 150 chance of having a child with Down's and a 1 in 70 chance of having spontaneous twins. When we first heard my third child's heartbeat, I asked my doctor to assure me there was only one, and she replied, of course, there's only one, you're not undergoing fertility treatments, don't be silly. It struck me as odd that concerns over the greater risk (spontaneous twins) were silly, but the lower risk was treated as almost likely.   [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics