Nuchal translucency screen results

Today was the nuchal scan. I was really nervous going in to it. Afraid the baby wouldn't be alive or that it would somehow look terribly deformed.

Before the scan started, we had the usual awkward and painful interchange where the tech was filling out paperwork and asked how many times we've been pregnant. When we said 7, I saw her do a little double-take. She asked how many births - 0. She asked if they'd all been miscarriages - yes. Awful. Awkward. And then we moved on.

We saw right away that the baby was alive, heart beating away. Baby was doing flips in there. At first they couldn't get a good neck measurement, so the tech looked at a bunch of other things instead. We saw the two hemispheres of the brain and she said the skull is intact. We saw the arms and hands. The legs and feet. That the abdominal wall was completely closed. Nasal bone was present and noted. Placenta was posterior, with baby lying transverse, its head on my left hand side. 

All good things.

All amazing things to see.

The tech lowered the head of the table I was lying on to see if she could get the baby to change position. No dice. She had me cough a little to try to move him/her. Finally, we got the baby in a good position. 

Nuchal fold was measured at 1 mm. So under 3mm, which I think is the cutoff that indicates a potential problem at this time marker. Here's an image of the nuchal fold, with a normal nuchal fold versus an abnormally thick one that might indicate a chromosomal problem:

photo credit: fetalecho.com

And below is an image of our little munchkin. Despite all the movement, its hand is STILL up by its face. My goodness this baby likes to keep its hands by its face!!

This is the best picture we could get. Looking more and more baby-like every day!

We had the screen at 1pm...and I've been on tenderhooks since then waiting for the doctor to call with the official results. He just finally called.

Our baseline risk of trisomy 21, considering my age + the fact that we have had a prior trisomy 21 pregnancy, is 1 in 74 (gulp).

Using the nuchal fold measurement + the bloodwork, our risk has dropped to 1 in 990 (!).

Our baseline risk of trisomy 13 and 18 is 1 in 227. 

Using the nuchal fold measurement + the bloodwork, our risk has dropped to 1 in 4,521 (!).

I also asked about triploidy, since that is the one thing we weren't able to test for ahead of time. He said that by this gestational age, a triploid pregnancy would look abnormal and have a smaller amount of amniotic fluid than expected. He said it would also likely screen positive on the nuchal screen. He said he had never seen a pregnancy look this good and turn out to be triploid.

I think it is sinking in.

We are pregnant.

We are really pregnant!

And things are looking good so far!!

Mo

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