16 Week Prenatal Appt This Week!

It shouldn't be very exciting, but I'm always kind of happy to go visit the midwife. It is still too early to hear the heartbeat with the fetoscope, and we're declining use of the doppler, so it should just be a weigh-in, pee-in-a-cup, and feeling the fundus appointment.

This would be the appointment that we could do the AFP test if we wanted it (we don't). It's essentially a blood test where the measure a few hormones and give you odds on whether your baby has down's syndrome. You have basic odds based on your age and some other factors (mine is < 1 in 1,000), so it'll tell you if you are more or less likely than your basic odds ratio. The problem with this test is that if you get a bad outcome:

1) it doesn't mean much of anything because the test has a 25% false positive rate (tells you your chance is higher than it really is) and
2) the odds of miscarriage if you continue with an amniocentesis (to confirm the AFP) is higher than the chance that your baby actually has downs. And that's assuming you'd actually do anything with the knowledge...

So, we've decided that we are not willing to take the risk of an amnio for such testing, and if we aren't going to do anything with the AFP info, then it's not worth the possible worry.