"thanks for coming in, this is a hard conversation to have over the phone"

I knew those words meant trouble immediately and then i looked down and saw the paper on Dr. Roberts' desk that said "HIGH RISK DOWNS SYNDROME" and I needed the tissues. So that is what we're dealing with today. A few weeks ago we had an ultrasound that showed a NT (the space between the baby's neck and back) measurement of greater than 2 - and up to 3 in some spots. My doctor sent me to a specialist who would run some more tests. We had a high-powered ultrasound as well as a blood screening. The ultrasound was very promising and all the parts were in order and there was a definite presence of a nasal bone (if that is missing you are almost assured a DS baby). So we waited for the blood work to come back.

A normal pregnancy has a risk of 1-600 for Downs Syndrome. Our risk level is 1-38. That is a pretty shocking number at first but there are some silver linings here. Our ultrasound showed all the right parts in the right place. That number is derived from bloodwork so if you have a naturally occurring high level of the protein they test for you can get a high risk factor without actually being at risk. The 1 in 38 is not out of all pregnancies, it is out of 38 pregnancies with the exact same test results – that means the odds are in our favor 97%.

Our doctor was pretty surprised by the results and said so himself. He thought our risk would be much lower because of everything he saw on the ultrasound and walked us through the pictures again. He was very kind to us but stayed emotionally neutral but did say that if it were Lisa (his wife, my other doctor) they’d have more tests to know for sure. I’ll talk to her on Monday when I have an appointment to get some further opinions.

The only way to know for sure if our baby had Downs is to do an amniocentesis and test the DNA and chromosomes. Chandler and I are considering all the factors but we’ll most likely have the test. So there is no reason for anyone to get all excited yet until we know something for certain just thought you should know.