As I sit in the waiting area with all the couples, I miss Mike. Since we don't have babysitting, Mike takes the morning off to watch our toddler, and I attend our first 'big hospital' ultrasound alone. Luckily, the hospital quickly accommodates me, and my sonogram is scheduled for the end of that week. So I call up my OB's office and inform them that I have decided to have the Sequential Screening after all. Again, it would not affect the outcome of my pregnancy, but maybe it would give me greater peace of mind, or maybe it would enable me to start mentally and logistically preparing for having a child with DS. But when someone we know had a beautiful baby girl who was born with Down Syndrome (and they did not know in advance), I decided, perhaps I would like to have an idea of whether we had a greater or lower chance of having a baby with DS or not. And since I felt relatively peaceful in my mind anyway, it didn't seem necessary. Other than probably peace of mind, I couldn't think of a great reason to have the test done. This second pregnancy, I have been debating having the tests done for the same reasons I did during my first pregnancy. With my first pregnancy, I decided to keep my ultrasounds to a minimum, and since I felt knowing this statistic was not going to change the outcome of my pregnancy (I wasn't going to have an abortion I probably wasn't even going to have an amnio or cvs if my stats came back telling me I was in the higher risk category), I opted to not have the screening done. Still, the majority of women opt for having these tests done. And a 1 in 10,000 chance still means that 1 baby out of 10,000 will still have the syndrome. A 1 in 10 chance still means that 9 times out of 10, your baby will not carry the extra chromosome. So, in the end, the Genetics Counselor can inform you that your baby has a 1 in 10 chance of having, say, Down Syndrome, or a 1 in 1000 chance or a 1 in 10,000 chance. It cannot tell us whether the baby has any of these syndromes (like amnio or CVS which can tell with great accuracy, but also are more invasive, and the procedures carry their own risks), but it can tell us the likelihood that the baby may have one of the syndromes. Sequential Screening offers a non-invasive method (ultrasound and bloodwork from the mom) to screen for Down Syndrome, Trisomy 18 and Open Neural Tube Defects. I have been debating whether or not to participate in the Sequential Screening process for this pregnancy.

Sequential screening