I turned down the Downs test!!!

[wavescrash]

With my first daughter, I got a false positive and it scared the crap out of me. Luckily my doctor said there are so many false positives and with no history of anything wrong in either sides of the families, he wasn't worried. I didn't want an amnio either.

My doctor mentioned the test at my first appointment and to be honest, I'm thinking of skipping it. I don't want the fear of another false negative.

 

[mummymarsh]

Sorry for the dumb question, but what puts you at high risk for having a child with downs and other issues? First pregnancy so I'm clueless with this type of stuff. I think I'm going to decline as well because I don't want to chance it with having a miscarriage.

also you will only be offerend amnio if there is increased risks of abnormalities etc because of the risk of miscarriage, you dont get offered it routinely x

 

[Nat0619]

I've declined any kind of testing and I'm 37 years old and expecting our first! And my midwife was absolutely fine about it. It is your choice, no-one elses.

My reasons are that I would never abort my child, no matter what. I understand the previous poster that said it could be kinder to abort than let a child be born who will not live long, but I believe it is God who should make the choice not me. I am very, very against abortion. It is just how I am. Should my child be born with an abnormality of some kind, we will adapt and we will love that child just as much. We tried quite a while to get pregnant the first time and then had a missed miscarriage with our first pregnancy. So this baby, whether it be perfect or not, is extremely precious and loved already. What is perfect anyway? No-one is. And the ladies who have posted on here who have children with DS, Autism etc just prove how rewarding and loving these children are.

I also have a friend who had the NT test and was told she was extremely high risk for DS. She had CVS and was offered a termination. She refused point blank to abort her child. Her little boy was born perfectly healthy and is now a gorgeous 3 year old. She spent her whole pregnancy worrying for nothing and could have aborted a perfectly healthy child! That is VERY scary. She said that throughout the whole pregnancy, she just knew her child was fine.

x

 

[Unbridled]

Sorry for the dumb question, but what puts you at high risk for having a child with downs and other issues? First pregnancy so I'm clueless with this type of stuff. I think I'm going to decline as well because I don't want to chance it with having a miscarriage.

Generally your age. Once a woman hits 35 and then 40 her changes of having a DS baby significantly increase

What's odd is that most babies with Down Syndrome are actually born to mothers under 35. I guess it's because more women under 35 actually have babies, which raises the percentage. My mother-in-law was 19 when she had her first child, and he was born with Down Syndrome. He's severely mentally and physically affected by it, but her next two kids (my husband and sister-in-law) were born perfectly healthy. Just goes to show that you never can tell what might happen in a pregnancy.