Reversed flow, high risk trisomy 21, vanishing twin

[Lilly2018]

Hi,

I am 12+2 today and at week 10 private harmony test we got high risk for downs. We had a "vanishing" twin at week 7 so the test is inconclusive. My MW at the hospital arranged for CVS for us last week and during the scan they were able to see the Nasal Bone, the NT was 2mm which is normal and heartbeat was 171, however there is reversed flow and " suspicion of underlying cardiac cardiac anomaly" - I'm waiting for the CVS results at the moment however I was told that even if the results come back positive there is possibility of "placental mosaicism" which means there could be the vanishing twins DNA in the developing babies placenta.

Now this is our 4th IVF transfer in the last 3 years ( male factor) - we've had BFN's , miscarriages and an ectopic. I'm 37 and DH is 38 - we had decided to only do 3 rounds of IVF. This was a frozen transfer with our last two embryos. I was mentally ready for it to be BFN and had started looking into adoption and see that as a positive step for us to take (even before we knew we are going to have difficulties we always talked about adopting) - however what I wasn't prepared for was a positive result but complications at this point. We had the discussion about potential abnormalities before the test and we both agreed that we would terminate..

It's been a week and 2 days since our positive harmony result and 4days since CVS- we were hoping for the results yesterday but it's going to be Monday now. I'm driving myself crazy by endlessly googling about the subject. Has anyone got similar experience? can a reversed flow be the only indicator for downs? if the test comes back positive there is still possibility of interference from the other twin, not sure how much of being in a limbo I can take. I took this week off work as my head is all over the place. Is there any tests out there that can tell us 100% or do we have to wait until week 16 when they can do further tests?

thank you

I don't have any experience of vanishing twins or downs but my daughter had reverse flow at the 12 week scan. This was not indicated as a reason for downs. They arranged for a cardiac specialist to be at our next scan and by that point the situation had resolved itself and all was normal with her heart.

Try not to google, it's a road to ruin. It's so hard to wait. Good luck.

Hi there,

No experience of vanishing twin, but we had reverse flow at the 12 week scan of current pregnancy as well as increased NT (5.8) and so baby was initially high risk for Downs. The consultant said that reverse flow can be an indicator of an anomaly, but that it can also mean nothing, the same as the NT reading. Since then we've had the all clear from CVS, no anomalies at 15 week cardiac scan and no anomalies at 20 week scan. Touch wood, baby is expected to be fine so I don't think reverse flow on its own is a particularly strong indicator of a problem, but I don't know much about the odds of abnormal cells being confined to placenta/mosaicism or the odds that the cells came from the twin...

The limbo weeks are awful and even worse when you've had to go through a lot to get to a BFP in the first place, as you have. I hope your CVS results come through tomorrow. If they think it's still inconclusive because of possible mosaicism, have they said you'll have to wait for an amnio at 16 weeks? That would be another long, long wait but I'm sure there was a story on these pages where the abnormal cells were confined to the placenta and the baby was fine so I guess it's a wait worth waiting, so to speak.

Hope you've got good doctors and MWs on hand to provide support. Lots of other posters recommend calling ARC for independent advice and support.
www.arc-uk.org/

Good luck xx