hyperechogenic bowel

[CharMamaof2]

So we had our 20 week scan today and sadly not all was good, and I feel a bit blindsided....
Baby has hyperechogenic bowel, so myself and my husband have both had blood tests for cystic fibrosis, plus other viruses. The outcome seems positive enough and sometimes babies just ingest blood or debris from the uterus which shows on the scan and is not harmful! Has anyone else been through this and has any words of advice? Trying not to worry which is easier said that done! 2 week wait on the blood test results...

I have just been through this. At 20 weeks my baby's bowel was apparently only mildly echogenic, but enough that we had to go through the whole testing thing. It was all incredibly stressful and upsetting, especially as at 12 weeks we had come back as high risk for Down's, and were only just recovering from that trauma! We had NIPT for that and came back all clear, but it was such an upsetting and difficult time, and so then at 20 weeks to get more potential bad news was just awful. At least we knew it wasn't a chromosomal problem! Anyway, we had the screening for CF and the TORCH screening, and all came back clear. We have been having regular growth scans and all appears fine, baby is growing well (I'm 32 weeks now and right on the 50th percentile). So although we won't know anything for certain until the baby is born, it seems likely it was nothing. Perhaps he just swallowed some blood.

I read this while it was all going on, and it made me feel a lot better:

www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1630478/posts

Hope it's good news for you. Keep in mind that in the vast majority of cases, it is.

Thank you Zambeam for your reply, it's really reassuring. We only found out this morning and I'm feeling drained reading all the information out there. It's good to know someone has had a positive outcome. We were also told our Downs risk has now increased to 1 in 500 as opposed to 1500, which thankfully is still low risk, but still makes you uneasy when you hear the sonographer say it.
Fingers crossed for a positive outcome and thank you for the link which I will have a good read of!