How do they test for syndromes - panicking

[CandyCane007]

Hello, so I'm 10 weeks pregnant with my first pregnancy and am waiting for my dating scan appointment, saw a midwife at week 8 who asked me if I wanted to have a Down's syndrome, Edward's and Patau's test done. She explained that if a baby has Edward's or Patau's it has very little chance of survival, so I agreed to find out..
I have since spoken to my mum about it, who said the way they test it is a needle in the abdomen which can cause miscarriages.
Realising my midwife never actually explained how it gets tested I've googled it and found three different answers: blood test, ultrasound and what my mum has said.

So I'm now panicking about how they test it and if my mum is right I don't want to cause a risk, so if anyone has had this test, how is it done?

Thank you, sorry this was long!!

Firstly it’s with a blood test and an ultrasound. The ultrasound looks for the fluid at the base of the neck called a nuchal translucency test. This is for Down’s syndrome and isn’t overly accurate.

The amniocentesis isn’t mandatory and you can say no at any time.

The Harmony test isn’t available on the NHS and costs £500 privately but is a blood test and scan combination that has no risk of miscarriage but can test for the syndromes you mentioned. You can also tell the sex from this blood test around 10-12 weeks.

For starters they will do a blood test (they have probably already done that bit with your iron levels etc at booking). Then on the dating scan they will look for markers of the syndrome by ultrasound. They won't tell you if you are high risk there your midwife will tell you at the next appointment.
If you are considered high risk for a syndrome you might be offered more invasive testing but you can choose not to have it. They would discuss it with you and risks etc if you were found to be high risk.

Hope that helps. Try not to worry too much (easier said than done!) most pregnancies are fine.

The NHS Combined Test is a blood test and ultrasound that tests for those syndromes. It's cheap for the NHS but only about 84% accurate. If the result shows you're high risk you can have a more accurate blood test to confirm - either Harmony (costs about £400) or in some parts of the country the NHS has started to offer an equivalent test to Harmony for free. This second blood test is 99% accurate. If you're stilll classed as high risk this is when they would do amniocentesis. The blood tests carry zero risk.

I just had mine done 2 weeks ago, they do a scan and look at your baby and measure different things on your baby, after the scan they take some blood from your arm.... then you get a letter in the post with your low risk results and nothing more is to be done..... however if they see something on the scan and something shows up in the blood they will call you usually the day after this and tell you that you are high risk, then you can choose to go ahead with the amnio or not (needle through the belly) but Iv had an amnio and it wasn’t that bad at all and t gave me the answers I needed to know

It's a blood test and neck measurement first so no risk to the baby. That will say if you are high risk for downs or not. The next stage is the risky part. I'm not sure I can see the point myself. It will tell me if there's a risk but I know there's a risk already. To be certain could harm a perfectly healthy baby. I'd leave it if it was up to me but my husband wants to do it.

Thank you!!!