Saturday, October 12, 2013

Prenatal diagnostics

I went for two appointments this week, as I was in Vancouver.  First, I saw my OB, who advised me to get myself down here from 20 weeks onwards and to stay in the city until at least one month after delivery.  The second appointment, I got an ultrasound at the IVF clinic, and the baby measures 9 weeks (should be 8w5d) and there was a very small subchorionic hemorrhage that had caused the bleeding, nothing worrisome.  In fact, the bleeding has stopped about one week ago, and I am ecstatic about that.

The thing that we discussed at this appointment was the prenatal diagnostics options.  With Emma I did blood work and a NT scan.  With this one, I have the option of NIPT testing, namely one called VERIFY, which takes fetal blood cells from my own blood and looks for chromosomal abnormalities in terms of trisomy 13, 18 and 21. It works just like an amnio, but it is much safer, since there is no belly poke, it is done by taking my blood. (As an aside, I am hoping that they will tell me the sex of the baby too...).  The test is done at 10 weeks, and the results come at 12 weeks, which for me is very beneficial, because terminating a pregnancy later than 12 weeks with a cerclage in place is almost impossible.  I think even 12 weeks is a bit late to be done through a regular d/c procedure, rather than a hysterotomy.

(Cause guess what, I will be 35 when I have this baby.  I have reached Advanced Maternal Age).

In any case, I am not going to worry about it, all I want to know now is that the baby is healthy and whether I am having to buy a pink or a blue pair of shoes.

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