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Good luck Cakegirl -- Let us know how the Level II goes.

LisaBlair: I can understand you making the statement above if you have not been pregnant before. By being worried we are not saying people with DS are "any less of a person", however I think all would agree to the opposite. For me I always pictured having a healthy child. It is scary! There are different forms of DS, some are worse than others. I think it is natural to be scared if a test comes back abnormal. I truly believe if you were pregnant and received an abnormal test for DS or any thing else, you would be just as worried.

Please help. I have a friend thats 17 weeks and her doc called her yesterday to tell her that her results are 1 out of 300 and that he was scheduling an appt for a genetics counselor to talk to her and that her results weren't good thats its normally 1 out of a million. She is freaking out and I told her the majority of the time its not accurate and that the baby is going to be ok. I am a mother of 2 boys in my 1st pregnancy they didn't do this test but for my 2nd they did and it was negative but I had pre-eclampsia. She has been thru a lot with this pregnancy and I think that maybe all these compkications can atribute to the results. She was in a severe car accident 3 weeks ago and in the hospital they checked her really good, did sonograms and everything and they told her the baby is healthy. Wouldn't they have seen something in the sono they said the babys spine was good.Please give me advice I don't want her pregnancy to get any more complicated than it already is because of this test result.

First of all it's NEVER one out of a million.. never ever ever. Also, her age has a lot to do with it.. how old is she.. ask them to give her a guestimate taking her age out of the equation.. with just my age.. and I'm 31, the odds are 1 out of 450 and thats WITHOUT any testing.. with the testing, it brought my odds to 1 out of 1600 and one out of 10000 for trisomy 18 and 21. Tell her not to worry and if that's the info her dr is giving her, tell her to get a new doc.

Yeah it's never 1 out of a million! There are a lot more babies born with ds than one in a million, right? At any rate... my test was positive and my chances of the baby being ds was 1:17. He was born in july and does not have ds. There is a high false positive rate as you know. However, a reg u/s can not determine if a baby has ds or not. She would have to go to a specialist for a level 2 u/s where they look for specific signs like the length of the thigh bone, the bridge of the nose, the back of the neck, the baby's weight, heart, and muscle tone. These are only markers (signs) of ds though. The only way to know for sure is amniocentisis. I did not find out for sure until he was born. Good luck.

I had my first baby 1 month ago and I spent my pregnancy scared with my afp screening test that gave me a 1:10 chance of down syndrome. After level II ultrasound the chances got a bit better as my due date was wrong. Even having chances of 1:200 I couldn't help to be scared, anyway my baby was born without down syndrome. Enjoy your pregnancy and remember those screening tests aren't accurate. I know it's hard not to worry, I wish I had enjoyed more my pregnancy, I was constantly nervous... Good luck and be happy!