16 wk Downs testing

[Mummyinpink1289]

Will you be doing it?

Hi Mummyinpink, I chose to do this - however I think that the best time is to test at your 12 week scan, they take extra measurements (I am a little hazy on the exact way this works as was not explained to me and I missed this opportunity as I was still undecided if I wanted the test and told the sonographer that when she asked, completely unaware that she needed a definitive answer so she could take extra measurements - I spoke to a midwife after the scan and that's when it was explained to me! I then opted to take the blood test at my next MW appointment) and then they use these measurements alongside a blood test too - I think that's how it works. With the blood test at 16 weeks I was told that because of my age (32) and my weight (slightly over weight) I would 'probably' come back high risk but I had already decided what I would do if that happened so wanted test, I came back low risk.

i did the Nuchal testing at 11 weeks and was glad i did. It's not a categorical positive or negative but my results were so low risk i was happy with that.

I assume you're referring to the amniocentesis?

if you want to do it, do it, rather than spending the rest of your pregnancy worrying about it. I was so glad to be able to 'draw the line' under it. If my results were 'high risk' i would have gotten the more invasive testing, such as the CVS, which can be done 3 weeks earlier than the amnio.

it's such a personal thing, do what your gut tells you.

thanks for the replies,i mean the 16 week blood test they offer. I had needles, and found myself sat here thinking if the test did come back high risk - would it change anything and if it wouldnt then is there any point in having it done at all?

IMO there is no point in having the test done if youre not going to do anything about it, that's just in my view. Also it's the reason i had mine done earlier, at 11 weeks, to give us time to do something about it as such. In other words, we had discussed it, and had decided we would terminate. I mean you can still terminate at 16 weeks, but i believe it's better for your future fertility to do it earlier- or so i've heard. make sense really.

I had it recently. It's my second pregnancy and I wanted to know my risk so to speak as obviously a child with chromosomal abnormalities would affect the child I already have. I wasn't so concerned about Down's syndrome but Edwards and patau syndrome are very severe.
My results came back as 1 in 52000 so a very low risk which I was relieved about.

yeah mine were 1 in 64000 so i figured that was good enough!!!
We had agreed that if i was less than 1 in 200 (my risk due to age) then we would go for the CVS.