I am thinking of having the amnio? Does it hurt? My doctor says the odds of having a downs syndrome baby are greater then the odd of having a miscarriage as a result of the amnio? thoughts? I think I will be bale to relax a little in this pregnancy if I have one, I am 40.
Re: not sure about the amnio
It's totally a personal choice, but I am opting not to get one. I agree with your doctor about the odds, but if my baby has Downs or other chromosomal issue, we're keeping him/her anyway, so I guess I'd rather go through pregnancy assuming the best.
Good luck with your decision!
I had an amnio much later in my pregnancy (36 weeks). We did it so that we could be prepared in case there was anything out of the ordinary. We would have done it earlier but we didn't even find out I was pregnant until I was 26 weeks along or so.
Yes, it hurt. I mean, your doctor is inserting a needle into your womb. I'm not going to lie and say it's painless. HOWEVER I would say that the pain was about equal to the pain of getting my blood drawn with a little added momentary muscle cramp. I was back to work later that day.
The rates for miscarriage are calculated based on all amnio's done. This includes doctors who do an amnio once a month along with doctors who do amnios every day. The more skill and practice a doctor has, the better your chances and really, for the most part it's a very small risk.
The procedure is that they'll have you on the ultrasound table and will give you an ultrasound first to find good pockets in your amniotic sac to draw from without touching the baby. Once they find some spots, they'll prep you (they coated me with alcohol and then iodine and then paper blankets to make a 'window') and then hold an ultrasound wand over the spot so the doctor can watch as the needle goes in. Needle goes in and then deposits a flexible tube and the needle comes right back out. The fluid is drawn (this took about 45 seconds for mine) and then the tube is pulled out and they put on a bandaid. The whole procedure took about 10 minutes, the actual amnio itself less than 2 minutes.
This exactly!!
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I am having an amnio (I'm 40) with no pre-testing. I did the screening last pregnancy, and it came back with 1 in 27 odds of Down's Syndrome. That created several weeks of stress and worry until I got the amnio done and results. We don't want to go through that again. It's a tough decision though. I feel very confident in the doctor that will be doing my procedure and that helps. Best of luck to you.
Edit: I don't remember the pain, so if it hurt, it wasn't much and very brief.