Quad Screen

I am 15 weeks pregnant which means I am in the window for getting the Quad Screen done, if I so choose.  The Quad Screen is a blood test that is done between weeks 15 and 18 of pregnancy that screens for certain abnormalities such as down syndrome, spinabifada and trisomy 18  It checks for these abnormalities by analyzing four specific substances in the mothers blood, hCG, AFP, Estriol and Inhibin-A.  The levels of these substances in the mothers blood combined with other factors, including age, ethnicity, and health determine the probability of the child being born with special needs.

 I am sure that making the decision on whether to get the test or not is hard for parents.  The test does have a risk of a false positive causing unnecessary distress, but there are certain risk factors that could put parents minds at ease if the results of the tests come back negative. Some of the risk factors that would cause such abnormalities in children are: Mother over 35, excessive exposure to radiation during pregnancy, viral infection during pregnancy, use of harmful medications during pregnancy, and a family history of birth defects. Since I have had none of these risk factors Ted and I decided to skip the testing.

 This was the right decision for us because we both know that weather our baby is born with special needs or not we are going to love it just the same. We knew before becoming pregnant that there is always a risk that something like that could happen to our child and we were willing to take that risk. Although our baby is only the size of an apple and I can't even feel it moving yet we still love our child and we chose to be positive and hope for a healthy baby!