Spotting and Down Syndrome Scare

On Monday February 20th (at 14 weeks pregnant), I had some spotting. I was obviously worried so I called my doctor's office. It was President's Day so I had to talk to a doctor from the emergency line. She basically said there wasn't anything they could do, so just take it easy, spend as much time in bed with my feet up as possible, call my doctor first thing Tuesday morning and if it gets any worse go to the emergency room. I spent the day taking it really easy and when I called Tuesday, my doctor scheduled me to come in that afternoon. I prayed all day Monday and all day Tuesday that our baby would be healthy. Even though it was a tiny amount of blood, I had read so many horor stories of people having no warning signs and going in for an appointment and the baby not having a heartbeat, so I was pretty freaked out.

Nic came with me to the appointment thankfully. We had to wait for quite a while. When the doctor finally came in she said our NT Scan results were in. She looked at the ultrasound results and said everything looked perfect. Then she looked at the blood test results and seemed a bit concerned. She said that our chances of having a baby with down syndrome was 1 in 210, which is apparently really high for my age. She asked if we would consider an abortion and went over our options for further testing. I was in shock. I had mentioned to Nic that we should discuss possible bad results before taking the tests, but his theory is always to not worry about things that are probably not going to happen. I had to agree with him because the likelihood we would be in this situation was extremely low. With that said, we hadn't really discussed abortion or what we would do if something was wrong with our baby. At this point in the appointment, I was really freaking out, because we had spent about 20 minutes discussing down syndrome and I still didn't even know if our baby was ok or not. After what seemed like forever, my Dr. checked on the baby with the Doppler. She said the heartbeat was nice and strong and baby seemed to be doing perfectly ok. That was suge a huge relief, but we still had no explanation for the spotting. My Dr. told me to take it really easy  and come back for another check-up in two weeks. She also said that if the spottong occued again to call right away because she would definitely want to do a lot more tests if it happened a second time.

Once we got to the car, I burst into tears. I couldn't even comprehend the thought of an abortion. I've wanted a baby for so long and we went through quite a bit to get pregnant and I'm completely in love with my little baby. There was no way I could end it's life. I was an emotional wreck that we even had to be discussing the possibility that our baby may not be healthy. Nic and I discussed the fact that down syndrome is compatible with life, but that our baby would never get to be normal. We also realized what an impact it would have on our lives as well. We were terrified to say the least. Having to think about things like that when it is so real, really changes how you look at life.

We both spent the next week, scared and upset, both worried sick over our little baby. After talking to a few people and realizing how common false positives are with this test (our results were still considered negative) and after talking to the specialist who performed the NT scan, we felt a bit more at ease. Since we had decided finding out for sure wouldn't change our decision and we were over the initial stress and worry and had realized no matter what we would love our baby more than anything, we decided not to proceed with the blood test that would tell us for sure. Instead, we will wait to see if the second part of the test (the 16 week blood test) would change our odds at all and go from there.

On March 20, (at 18 weeks pregnant) I ended up back at the Doctor's office because of more spotting. The doctor ran a bunch more tests and conducted an ultrasound to make sure the baby was ok. She also gave us the updated results from our 16 week bloodwork. The baby's odds of having down syndrome had dropped to 1 in 810, which the Dr., Nic and I were all much happier with. It was such a relief.

This pregnancy sure has thrown a lot of curve balls at us, but it has definitely made Nic and I closer and made us both closer to God. We appreciate everyone's prayers and support and hope that you will all love and accept all children even if they have special needs.