After we'd had the scan we went obviously in to see the midwife and she explained about the different blood tests that they wanted to do on me, which was just normal things like toxoplasmosis*, because obviously me being a veterinary nurse, and also about the triple test and whether we wanted to go for it.
And we decided because of our age that the way we understood it was, it was just for Down's syndrome, and because of our age and there was no family history of Down's syndrome that we were happy to not go with the triple test, you know, and just to obviously wait until 20 weeks and have a normal abnormality scan then.
Whereas in fact the triple test does look for neural tube defects?
Yeah, it would have. There were, obviously not until the 20, obviously when we had the condition that we found out that [daughter] had, that we found out that yes, you know, the triple test did do spina bifida and other neural tube problems, which would, yeah it would have been useful to do, or to know and to have done.
Do you think if you'd known that at that stage, that you would have opted to take it. Or might you still have thought, “Well, we're low risk, we're young”?
No I think I would have done because the way I understood the way the triple test worked, obviously it was a blood test and they sent it off and they looked for the percentage of Down's syndrome in obviously the blood particles and then they went on and did an amniocentesis.
And I said that there were no circumstances I was doing an amniocentesis because I didn't want to risk my pregnancy just from, you know, “What if?”.
My husband was the other way round, he wanted to know whether the baby was Down's syndrome, but he supported the fact that I felt strongly that I didn't want an amniocentesis so he said, “Okay, well, you know, because you don't want an amniocentesis, that's fine. We'll just wait and see and, you know, if it is then we'll have, have to go from there really.”
And nobody talked to you about a nuchal fold scan at that stage?
No, no one, no one said anything about nuchal fold problems or anything like that.
So no one, is it, it's not common practice to provide it here?
No, no, they do, they just do the, the normal dating scan at 12 weeks and then the abnormality scan at 20. Yeah, so they, no one really explained until obviously after everything that happened with the first pregnancy, you know, what it actually entailed.
And obviously we understood that the triple test took on the, you know, the spina bifida - well no, we understood that the triple test took on the Down's syndrome side but we didn't understand what the other two things were, and no one really explained it to us.
And I suppose if, you know, if we'd delved deeper into it, yeah, we could have understood it better ourselves, but being quite naive and young and, you know, kind of excited that you'd got this baby and nothing can go wrong with your pregnancy because you're young and everything's on your side, that, you know, you just kind of just move along with it, really.
* Toxoplasma is a parasite found in cat's faeces and infected meat. Around 30% of women have already had a toxoplasma infection before pregnancy and are immune. Some research suggests 2 in every 1000 women catch toxoplasmosis during pregnancy. In around 30-40% of cases infection during pregnancy can lead to infection in the unborn baby: congenital toxoplasmosis. If the baby gets it, it can cause serious problems including miscarriage and brain damage. Routine screening for toxoplasmosis is not offered in this country at present. Although toxoplasmosis is quite serious when it occurs, the figures above show it is relatively rare.
More information is available from www.womens-health.co.uk/toxo.asp |
