Echogenic bowel

[jaimimai]

I am 21 weeks pregnant and at the 20 week ultra sound the bowel appeared darker than usual. My baby has not been diagnosed with echogenic bowel as the darkness is lighter than usual echogenic bowel cases, but I have been told not to rule out that the baby has echogenic bowel. Echogenic bowel can mean the baby has down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, an infection or it could be nothing. There is a very low chance my baby ha DS as ive been tested but I have had blood taken to test if I am a carrier of CF or if the baby has an infection. I was just wondering if anyone else is or has been in this situation? has anyone else had their baby diagnosed with echogenic bowel? I am so worried and would love to chat to someone who has been or is currently going through this. Many thanks to anyone who replys

Hi there,

We've just moved this to antenatal tests, so you might get a few more responses.

Yes, me. I'm 24 weeks pregnant and had echogenic bowel shown on the 20 week scan (which I actually had at 18 weeks) and was told the same things as you: it could be that the baby had swallowed blood from a bleed earlier in the pregnancy (I did have this but it was thought it was to do with the cervix rather than in the uterus), CF, infection, or Downs.
It was really upsetting hearing all this - I didn't have a clue that anything was wrong until the end of the scan so I know how you are feeling.
It's good that you have already been tested for Downs and this puts the odds up greatly that everything is OK. Apparently 1 in 100 babies show echogenic bowel at 20 weeks and the vast majority are fine. I am 37 and the consultant said echogenic bowel put my background risk of 1:200 for Downs up to 1:40 or 1:50. I have now had the Harmony test which has come back very low risk so I am reassured by that. DH and I have been tested to see if we carry the CF genes and we don't, and I also tested negative for the infections: CMV, toxaplasmosis, rubella.
But it's still concerning. I don't think we will feel really OK until we have a healthy baby in our arms (or as the consultant put it, until the baby is about 30!)
I had a further scan at 23 weeks which showed that the bowel was 'prominent' rather than 'bright' (another term for echogenic bowel) which means it's slightly better, but I am now being scanned every 4 weeks.
Have you had an amnio or the NHS first trimester Downs screening or Harmony/NIFTY? I declined the amnio.
What have they said will happen after the blood test results?

One other thing they said was that the prominent bowel might show up clearly as I am of slim build. But I don't know if that means if I wasn't it would still be there but they couldn't see if IYSWIM?

Hi my second ds had a severely echogenic bowel as well as free fluid.
My pregnancy was very high risk (other factors) and I was hospitalised. I was given the opportunity for further testing but I declined it, as for me it wouldn't have affected any decision I made. That is a very personal decision to make, I would advise getting as much information from your drs as possible to inform your decision. There is a website somewhere too, I'll link later when I get a minute.
In my sons case the echogenic bowel was both a infection and a result of him swallowing blood (I was bleeding internally) he was delivered at 24 weeks, both due to the infection and me suffering a placental abruption. (This is NOT in anyway usual so don't panic )
My son was born with a infection but 19 months later is a perfectly healthy boy.
I hope nay of that helps, if you have any questions I maybe able to help with please don't hesitate to ask
Take care

I had this with my youngest. Same as you there was a bright patch on the bowel at the 20 week scan.

We went for further scans at the fetal medicine unit with the consultant and both DH and I were tested for the 50 most common CF gene faults. DP's results were clear but I was found to be a carrier, one half of my CF gene is faulty. This combined with the bright bowel gave our baby a 1 in 5 chance of having CF. We were referred to a genetic counselor who offered further CF testing - DP's blood would tested again for any known CF mutation (there are something like 1800). This whole process took about 6 weeks by which time I was almost 30 weeks PG. We were counseled about what we would do should the results show the baby had CF and were talked through the process of what would have been an extremely late termination. To be honest it was awful, an absolutely horrible experience I wouldn't wish on anyone.

The results took just over a week to come back and they were clear, DP's CF gene has no mutations so the only way our baby would be born with CF is if a spontaneous mutation occurred(a one in a million chance). Needless to say it didn't and our son is now almost 18 months and perfect.

I won't bother to tell you not to google things or not to worry because of course you are, I know I did but this is not a rare thing, it happens a lot and is almost always nothing wrong.

Wishing you both best of luck with the rest of preganacies and your new little smalls :)

Hi there,

Sorry to hear you find yourself in this worrying situation, I had my 20 week scan last week( at 21 weeks) and we were told the baby had an echogenic bowel. We have both had a blood test for Cystic fibrosis and are anxiously awaiting the results on Wednesday. I'm worried sick. My husband does have some history of this in his family, his great uncle had girls who had cf. Doctor told us there is a 1-3% chance of it being CF.

My understanding is that for the child to have it both parents need to be CF carriers. If husband was a carrier and I wasn't the baby wouldn't have CF but may also be a carrier . Even if we were both carriers there is still a 75% chance the baby wouldn't be. The odds are good but it's still a massive worry.

At our 12 week scan we opted to have the NT testing which came back at low risk. Given the echogenic bowel was the only marker at our scan and given that I'm 31 I'm not overly concerned about DS.

I hope to hear some other reassuring stories from people where echogenic bowel has turned out to be nothing serious.

I hope you have some answers by this stage OP. would be good to hear how you are getting on?

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