I am 35 and pregnant with my first baby. I'm 13 weeks and 1 day and any appointment that I've had the subject of testing and abnormalities has come up based on my age. I guess I'm just surprised at how much hospitals push these tests! I had the nuchal scan done, it was normal. I noticed they didn't look at the nasal section for anything, is this normal? I had the blood testing done just because if there is something wrong i want to know. The reason i think there COULD be something wrong is basically based on what I've read. I know one person who has a baby with downs and she had him at 27. Anyone I know who has a had a baby over 35 has had a healthy child. Why all these scary stats! Maybe more people have issues but they terminate those pregnancies? it's just frustrating that once they hear you're 35 it's like you're at risk. I was normal for muscular dyst and cystic fibrosis...just waiting on the downs test now...even if my results are ok, that doesn't rule out the possibility of EVERYTHING being perfect. Maybe the baby will have some other issue that I wont find out about until he's 5. I'm just frustrated that this is supposed to be a happy time and i feel as though the dr's and nurses have just scared me.
Re: Are abornamalities all that common??
(I realize 1.5% doesn't exactly match up with the wikipedia numbers, but I'm citing two different sources and I can't really compare them since I'm pulling one--the number given by my geneticist--off the top of my head.)
AMA & SAIF. TTC #1 since Oct. 2010. DX: Unexplained. BFP on break after 32 months trying and 2 med cycles. Baby girl born at 40w0d!
jbelle
Also remember the number of women over age 35 getting pregnancy and having children is much less overall than the number of women under 35 (yes #s for us over 35 are increasing)
FWIW, I don't feel I was treated any differently in regards to testing when I was under 35 then I was this time being over 35.- I have been, not drastically but yes different. I didn't have ANY tests when I was 25-30...of course that was 16-11 years ago...so things have changed. I didn't have an ultrasound to date the pregnancy they just gave me an edd based on my lmp even though my cycles are crazy..