Questions & Answers

Let me tell a little about my experience but mine was the quad testing done at 16 weeks. It was covered under insurance and me being 27, hubby 28 with no family history on either side of any issues I figured it wouldn't hurt plus my sister did it with all 4 of her pregnancies and her and doctor both told me its just "a good check in the box." WELLLLLL my testing gave me the worst 2 weeks of my life! It came back 1/23 for Trisomy 18 with the other 3 (downs, spinal, and all other disorders) way out in left field. My doctor was very alarmed and we rushed to the specialist for the AS and possible amino. EVERYTHING WAS FINE! The specialist was telling me I was silly to be worried and most of the time things pop up showing something wrong or the baby doesn't make it into the 2nd trimester. Those blood tests can give you a horrible scare and most do not do them for this reason. A lot of people ask me if I will do it again to see what results I will get and I am scared to death to do

I opted out of this screening. The anatomy scan around 20 weeks can pick up any markers for chromosomal diseases like downs as well anyways and the blood tests and tests for these abnormalities have a high false positive rate. All the mothers that I know that had it done warned me not to do it. It caused them a lot of unnecessary worry.

We decided not to have the tests, because it wouldn't have changed how we went forward with the preganacy. But for the people who say because of age chances are low, that may be true but people of all ages do have babies with down and other problems, don't don't just assume you won't because of age and family history. Also we were told that 3 out of 4 babies with downs will look perfectly fine on an ultrasound.

I did not get the screening. I am 27 years old and the chance of down syndrome for my child at my age is so low I did not see a reason to get it done. My doctor gave me a chart and the chances were 1 in 1275. That is 0.08% chance, it's basically not possible at this point. i had my 18 week ultrasound where they do a very thorough scan of the baby and everything was completely normal.

Im a perfectly healthy 30 year old with 3 perfect children. No reason at all to suspect a chromosomal abnormality in our child.
When I did the screening with my pregnancy in December it showed our baby had Holoprosencephaly which has a 0% survival. This was confirmed with a CVS. There is a 0.03% chance of this occurring in any pregnancy.
If I had passed on this screening my daughter would have been still born before 25wks gestation or died within hours after birth.
Im extremely grateful to have the advantage of knowing before this happened.
We were waiting until we got the results before telling the children we were having a baby, just in case. The emotional toll this would have taken on them on them as well as our family would have been unbearable.
I could never recommend passing on these tests no matter how small the chance is of something being wrong.
In New Zealand this is considered a necessary procedure and is available 100% free for everyone~Thank goodness!

Where I live the screening is covered for everyone and I decided to do the ultrasound and only if they saw something irregular would I consider the blood work. With no family history the odds were higher of a worrisome blood result that is actually baseless than showing real info. Good luck momma

My doctor told me that the tests are to tell you the odds of different abnormalities being present - they won't tell you 100% if there's a problem or not. So, what you're paying for is finding out what the odds of there being a problem are. Here, the tests are covered by public health insurance so I will get them, but if they weren't covered, I likely wouldn't be shelling out $$$$ to find out that I have an X probability of the fetus having disease Y.... if there are real concerns based on the ultrasound, they will order tests to see what's going on - making them medically necessary and covered by your insurance. I would say that if the ultrasound looks okay, go without 'em... heck, a lot of us on here were probably carried through pregnancy without these tests ;) I hope this helps!

They say the blood test is not 100% accurate in detecting abnormalities anyway.. i have had 3 children and opted not get the blood screening done for any of them (its free where i live) because the thought of being told something was wrong,,when it actually may not be... doesn't sound like fun. I would go with the ultrasound :) best of luck to you! this is only my own opinion, others may feel different.