And did it come out low on the blood test?
Well, I mean, obviously I didn't know what the overall range was. For Down's syndrome with my first child it was 1 in 1800, and from what I'd read the risk being high was viewed to be within 1 in 250 or lower, so in that respect I felt that it was quite a way off.
It's only sort of since my second pregnancy where the ratio was very low, 1 in 3800 or something, that I realised that it can actually go that low, and that 1 in 1500 compared with 1 in 3800 is quite a bit different.
Can you get your head round these figures?
No, not really. I mean, I think that it was from, it was pure sort of curiosity that I wanted to know.
Because these risk figures are kind of, you're given nothing much to compare against, are you?
No. Well, only the 1 in 250.
Yeah.
I suppose that was my baseline, how near to 250 is my result? And 1800 is a long way away in terms of the way it's scaled, I suppose. So in terms of sort of statistical information, I could make a rational interpretation, I suppose, of the information that was being given to me. And I realised that that still is only a chance sort of estimate, it's not absolute.
But it was sort of a high enough ratio, or is it a low enough ratio? A high enough ratio to reassure me that the chances of the child being born with Down's syndrome, given the reliability of the tests, was generally not very likely, but I always knew that till the baby was born you wouldn't actually know. |
