12 weeks blood test

[Abr]

Hi,

I am 30 years old and I am currently just over 12 weeks (I'll be 13 in 2 days). This is my first pregnancy.

A little back story: I have a half brother (we have the same mum) who has Down's syndrome and is 8 years older than me. I also had a cousin who had Edward's syndrome who was just over 4 years older than me. She died at 11 months and was the my aunt's daughter (my mum's sister). Both my mum and my aunt didn't have tests to check for these syndromes when they were pregnant and only found out after their children were born and tests were done then.

I had my 12 weeks checks today and the woman said everything looked OK with the baby (checked their neck etc).

I had the blood test to check for things like Down's syndrome, Edward's syndrome and Patau's syndrome and they said I should either receive a phone call within 5 days or a letter within 2 weeks.

I'm just getting worked up and paranoid about receiving a phone call in a few days. I keep looking up things about Patau's syndrome, which isn't helping.

I read somewhere that you can have amnio and CVS tests performed to get a more accurate result, but how do I stop worrying?

Thank you!

Hey we had a Down syndrome diagnosis in April and we’ve just had all our tests back for this pregancy and all is okay! Everything I read was that it was random I think it increases by 1% if you have a sibling with it.

I don’t know if this is true but I’m not sure DS is genetic is it? (I didn’t look into this so I don’t know) but everything I ever read always just said it’s just totally random.

I also had a CVS and if you do end up needing one it genuinely was fine and didn’t hurt at all. It’s the same injection as a dentist procedure and then you feel nothing honestly. Was fine.

good luck. Our high risk results took 7 days with combined screening.

the anxiety is unbearable - I was a mess thinking it was gonna happen again to us this time but every pregnancy is different.

I'm pretty sure the NHS only offer further testing if you were high risk as a result of the combined screening. I was also really anxious this pregnancy and paid privately to have the NIPT done, but it's around £400 and results still take about 5 working days, so even if you wanted to pay for it you would still unfortunately be waiting a few days.

I don't know anyone that hasn't felt slightly anxious after the combined screening and it's really easy to let your head spiral, but the chances are everything will be absolutely fine. There's a lot of anxiety and unknowns in pregnancy, whether it's your first baby or 4th. I always remember how anxious I get leading up to the anomaly scan and then when everything is fine you think 'well I was worrying for absolutely nothing'! If you need some reassurance you could always phone your midwife and tell her you are struggling. I hope you get your results quickly.

@CSSL7 thank you for your reply! I always dread having to wait for any blood results as it is, but lately, I have had so much stress and lack of sleep due to work and the manager that I am becoming more easily worked up and overthink the situations

@readyforroundthree thank you for replying! I have had friends say the same thing about worrying when they had it done and everything was OK. I think with work being the way that it is, I am just becoming more stressed and overwhelmed with things. I might try and contact my midwife when I get the chance to and say how I am feeling at the moment