I got a call from the hospital today. When the hospital called I knew it was something bad. I wasn’t expecting a call from them and I knew I had no appointments coming up so it wasn’t an appointment reminder so it couldn’t be good. And it wasn’t. My AFP test came back positive for trisomy 18. The nurse said the baby had a 3% chance of having an extra chromosome #18. She said we could have another ultrasound and an amniocentesis to be sure. The amniocentesis has a small risk of miscarriage. It was just too much information to take in. I don’t think I even heard everything she said. I told her I would call her back.

So we hung up and I looked in my prenatal folder for the little booklet that came about AFP screening. So this is what it said:

Trisomy 18 is caused by an extra chromosome #18. Babies with trisomy 18 have severe mental retardation and physical defects. They usually die before birth or in early infancy.

Well that’s when I threw the booklet down and started crying. I’ve calmed down now. I talked to some mommies on the September 2005 Expecting Club on iVillage and am now more positive. They said these tests do have a high false-positive rate and the rate of miscarriage is 1 in 200 so I’m very hopeful that everything will turn out fine.

I need to know if something is wrong with the baby so I’m going ahead with the amniocentesis. I scheduled it for next week Wednesday.

Posted in: Pregnant
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