Spent most of yesterday at King's College Hospital yesterday after having a worrying phone call on Monday that the baby has a 'high risk' of having Down's Syndrome.
Normally in low risk people there is a 1 in 1500 chance of having baby with Down's, but it was 1 in 95 with ours they told us yesterday. Getting there at 3 for our appointment at 3.30, we have to wait until 6.30 before we were seen! And with a girlfriend doing her nut with worry, it wasn't fun. And that was before we were told the delay was due to 'complications'.
So finally we were seen, and had about a 30 minute ultrasound scan where we saw in great detail almost every part of our baby as they had to take measurements of just about everything. Saw our baby's lips and ******* it's thumb. I said it before, ultrasounds are the coolest thing. The lady doing the scan said everyting looks good and the baby was very active but there is a gland in the brain, and there was fluid in the gland, all babies can have this but it could be a sign of chromosonal problems such as Down's, if the baby doesn't have Down's, there is nothing to worry about.
But after this came the tough part and what we came for, Amniocentesis. It will tell us for certain if there is Down's, but there are risks as 1 in 100 will miscarry after having it done and after a few minutes of talk and worry, we decided it would be best to find out and to be sure, rather than for it to prey on our minds the rest of the pregancy. A large, thin needle went into the womb, and took some of the amniotic fluid to test, and everything went ok and showed us the heartbeat of our little one afterwards. We have to wait about 4 days for the preliminary results to come in and 2-3 weeks for the definate result.
They said that there will be pain for my girlfriend for a couple of days, and a slight blessing of waiting so long was that we missed rush hour and managed to have a relaxed journey back and I have a couple more picture to scan into the computer so I can put them on here.
I know the chances for everything are small, but you don't want it to happen to you, so hopefully everything will be ok, my missus would have felt better if the baby had kicked or moved this morning, just to let us know he/she was ok.