- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
March 2012 Moms
AshTBurk
member
Is anyone NOT doing the NT scan?
AshTBurk
member
I'm just curious ... have any of you ladies decided NOT to do the first trimester screen, NT scan thing? I am only 23 years old, healthy and have no family history of birth defects. I decided not to do the NT scan because I didn't want to cause undue stress to myself, if I were to get a false positive. I tend to stress a lot, and I know I would panic if anything looked even slightly risky.
I have 2 questions:
1.) At the anatomy scan later on, will they be able to detect Down Syndrom or other major things?
2.) How common is it for low-risk women to get the NT scan anyway? I feel like everyone I've talked to has done it, even though they have no risk factors.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Is anyone NOT doing the NT scan?
I'm not having it, in fact it's not even offered anywhere around where I live. They send high risk women an hour away to have it done if they wish.
As far as the questions, the NT scan only tells of the odds of your child being affected by Down Syndrome, not if they have it. If you get high odds like 1 in 10, then you would be offered further testing like an amnio. That is the only way to know for sure if the baby has something like Down Syndrome. At the anatomy scan they look for markers, basically things that are more likely to be present if the child has Down Syndrome, but again the only way to know for sure is through an amnio.
I'm not having it. It actually wasn't even offered to me. I'm 28, healthy and I was already tested for the only genetic disease that has ever manifested in my family.
At my 12 week appointment this past week they drew blood for the first part of a screening (the second part will be a blood draw at my next appointment). The two blood samples assess risk for Downs syndrome, Trisomy 18, Neural Tube defects and SLOS. If there is a screen positive result, they'll send me for additional tests. So it's not the same as the NT scan, but I guess it checks for similar things. It's part of the California prenatal screening program.
I definitely think it's inconsiderate for others to say that if you get it done you don't love your child. Obviously that's not true. We would have done it if we could have had more certainty about neural tube defects because of my Lyme situation. But as I said above, there are very few disabilities that they can test for, and those disabilities will still change your life even though you didn't know about them ahead of time.
We are not doing it either because we are not willing to to the next step and do the amnio, so basically the NT Scan was pointless if we wouldn't do further testing.
I am pretty sure that the a/s will detect any large issues. Our friends passed up the NT Scan, but during the a/s they were given an elevated risk of having a baby with downs syndrome (everything was fine when there son was born).
We did not opt for it and my doctor recommends that all of her patients decline the testing if they are not going to do anything with the results (such a terminating the pregnancy). We have had the conversation with her and she doesn't recommend it because of the risk of a false positive.
They will be able to see a lot with the anatomy scan. If anything shows up as off, they will probably refer you to a specialist.
I don't know anyone who has done it in real life---just on this board. I'm low-risk and even though we have a 50% chance of our LO having a rare brittle bone disorder that would be inherited from DH, we choose not to do any of this testing since it doesn't change anything. The only way to detect that is through an amnio and there's too much risk of miscarriage for me to feel comfortable.
We are not doing the screening for the same reasons as many other posts here, didn't want to stress about something that isn't 100% accurate. Plus our friends got a false positive on their first results and were freaking out for no reason cause they have a healthy beautiful little girl now.
As LillyPotter has already said for herself, this type of response COMPLETELY pisses me off, as the implication is that if one does decide to do the test, it's because they wouldn't love their baby if something was wrong. That is BS.
My doctor recommends the NT scan for every patient. Although it looks for downs and the two trisomies already mentioned, other things can be revealed as well. For example, one of my friends discovered a missed miscarriage that had happened 4 weeks earlier. Another girl right on this board discovered her baby had no brain development. These are rare, but I for one would not want to first learn these things at 20 weeks. Also, as others have already said, if you get tipped off at the NT scan that something may not be right you can do other screening down the road (not necessarily amnio) that can give you more answers and allow you be more prepared at birth, mentally and physically.
PS: The risk of miscarriage from an amnio, while not zero, is between 1/200 and 1/300. That's less than 0.5%. With a very experienced doctor it's even lower. While it's difficult to imagine putting oneself at any risk, I think the risk is way overblown in people's minds.
Lost our first angel, 10/24/08 7w6d
Proud mama to Cameron
Lost our second angel, 2/16/11 8w
Proud mama to Melanie