Our ages?

I seen this on another forum, and was amazed at how many parents were in there early 20’s. So thought I would post here to see how old we all were

How old were you when you had your child with down syndrome?

I was 34 years


Ps if anyone would like the link to the other site PM me.

Snap!! My goal was to finish childbearing before 35 because of statistics...if only they'd told me about the 80% of children being born with DS were to mothers under 35yrs

Cas

Cas - my goal was to finish before 30. My theory was "things go wrong after that" !!!

Well I was told in 2003 I would never be able to carry another child to term (after a m/c) so we were going on with our lives with 1 child and dealing with the medical issues also diagnosed at that point.

Just to prove them wrong, my body decided to get pregnant two more times (You never tell me I can't do something!)

I thought i was done 5 kids ago apparently i was wrong . You know i never ever gave much thought to things being wrong.

At 42 with 2 teenage kids we changed the SISTEM and voila'............here I am....

I was 19 when I conceived Emily and 20 when she was born.

I was 31 when I conceived Paige and 32 when she was born! Never did I think I would be a high risk for having a child with Down Syndrome! When I had my NT scan and bloods and my OB told me my risk was 1:53, well you couldve knocked me over with a feather I was that shocked!

~Danni~ wrote:

I was 31 when I conceived Paige and 32 when she was born! Never did I think I would be a high risk for having a child with Down Syndrome! When I had my NT scan and bloods and my OB told me my risk was 1:53, well you couldve knocked me over with a feather I was that shocked!

Danni, I never had the NT scan with Emily. I didn't even know it existed... was it even around 7 years ago???
Anyway, I just had the triple serum screen or whatever it's called. My results came back as low risk with 1:2800 chance of her having ds.

See, that's the problem with statistics....how can they say that 1:800 live births are babies with DS but then say to someone they have a 1:2800 risk of giving birth to a baby with DS?? Too many numbers flying around and they don't really know unless they do amnio or CVS. That's my opinion :geek:

Cas

I was 30 when I conceived, 31 when he was born.
Triple screen came back fine, no concerns.
17 week Ultra sound found Mild Pericardial effusion, but no concerns, just follow up ultrasound at 28 weeks...
28 week ultrasound was when the proverbial hit the fan...

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I was 31 when I conceived Paige and 32 when she was born! Never did I think I would be a high risk for having a child with Down Syndrome! When I had my NT scan and bloods and my OB told me my risk was 1:53, well you couldve knocked me over with a feather I was that shocked!

I was a high risk being that i was 42 and yes my NT scan and bloods came back with a 1in2 chance. Other than the NT results my U/S never picked up any soft markers or heart problems :no: so i had an amnio to find out for certain and here we are

1in2 chance! WOW!
I'd never heard of anyone getting that result from NT before.

With Kailah and with this bub I will only be having the NT scan.
No matter the results we will not do further testing, it doesn't matter to us. We've done it once, we can do it again right?!

I was 43 when I conceived her and when I had her. I had lost 3 before her to miscarriage at age 39, 40 and 42 (or something like that). My NT scan came back normal - very low risk as did all the others. I refused the amnio. When they found her heart defect the % of possibility for DS went from around 20% to 98% so here I am. Talitha has changed our whole family for the better and been the biggest blessing in my life for a long time.

I was 31 when I conceived Matthew and was given an over 1:3000 chance at the NT scan!!

I was 35 when I conceived and had her.

At the NT scan we were given a 1:37 and we refused any further testing. At the 20wks morphology scan we were given the all clear, including a perfect heart - we still don't know who's scan they were looking at LOL! Our chance's then halved to 1:74, but I just knew I was carrying a girl who had DS!

The rest as they say is history and we wouldn't change a thing either!

I should also mention that at my 18 week scan, Paige's femur lengths were measuring about 2 weeks behind, and there was a suspected heart problem then. At 35 weeks had another scan to check out the heart, and her femur length was measuring 30 weeks, and a VSD was picked up! I think I was worried that I was going to have a baby who was a dwarf! I was so scared! I wasnt scared of having a child with Down Syndrome, that was the furthest from my mind! The VSD was also an issue to me, yet my OB and the midwives were more concerned with the DS They were wanting me to have an amnio but I made up my mind I was having her, God, I had already started to feel her moving around and had a connection with her! My OB at the time, who was a very Old school moron and reffered to DS as "Mongolism" didnt even send me for any kind of counselling. He said 1:53 was a "good number".

With Summer's pregnancy I went for genetic counselling prior and decided I was going to have further testing if my NT results were less than 1:1000, but my NT results with bloods came back 1:4380, so didnt bother.

I was 33 when I fell pregnant with Ollie and turned 34 just before he was born..

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My OB at the time, who was a very Old school moron and reffered to DS as "Mongolism" didnt even send me for any kind of counselling.

If you wanted the amnio then an abortion I think they give you counselling then

interesting topic. I was 35 when I conceived Isabella and just turned 36 when I had her. My NT scan and blood test came back with a 1/550 chance of DS (1/275 standard for 36yo). At the 19 wk the only thing that came up was an echogenic (sp?) heart focus which shows up in about 5% of normal pregnancies anyway. I also had a 'feeling' though.....

I was 28 when Blake was conceived and 9 days off turning 29 when he was born. I was given a 1:8000 odd chance before my NT scan and afterwards I was dropped to a 1:3 chance. Surprisingly we were pushed into this high risk category due to my blood test results as opposed to the neck thickness test?? We had an amnio as we wanted to deal with the situation at that time and give ourselves as much time to learn about DS before he arrived (wish I had of known about this site then). What I have learned about statistics is that someone has to be the 1:???.

Another question - I was told at 10 weeks that I would miscarry Blake because the sack around him was too large and odd shaped or something. Told this the day before flying to Hong Kong for a holiday so they sent my file over to a doctor there in case I miscarried. Sonographer was amazed when 2 weeks later I strolled into the office and everything was fine!!! Did this happen to anyone else??

I guess my story, when it comes to this, is interesting.

I had the nuchal ultrasound with my first 3 children, all of which had a nuchal fold measurement of less than 1mm, over the required 3 measurements. The chances of DS for my first 3 were 1/2000+ for each of them. I never had the blood tests that go with the nuchal, and fully admit that I only had the nuchal as it was another chance to "see" my babies.

With Georgia, she was concieved, and born, when I was 36. The first pregnancy I had over 35, so I could have had the works, but I never considered an amnio.

I am a large woman, weight wise, so all my other nuchals had been done transvaginally, pretty much automatically, as that was the only way to get a clear picture. However, the guy who did Georgias was an Indian man (not racist AT ALL, just mentioning this as I really think it made an impact on this particular story) who desperately did not want to do a transvaginal scan, and seemed very uncomfortable when I suggested the idea, at the time where he could not get a clear picture of Georgia's nuchal fold, due to my body size. She was facing face forward, and stubbornly stayed that way, despite all his banging on my stomach ruthlessly, trying to get her to move, making me empty my bladder, so on and so forth. After nearly an hour he got only one measurement, when she flipped around for only a few seconds, before flipping back again, and that measurement was under 1mm. He got the senior radiographer in, and he did put dildocam in, but still, she would not turn. They asked me what I wanted to do, have a repeat scan? Have the bloods? I said no, it's fine, thanks, we got under 1mm for that one measurement, that's good enough for me. I had THREE babies, bang, bang, bang, with no a problem in the world. It just never occurred to me.

When I went to my private sonographer, who I pay dearly for, for the 18 week scan, there was a recommendation that he check very closely for abnormalities, given that I was over 35, and we had not got a satisfactory nuchal fold result. He found nothing wrong, and he was very thorough (this makes sense, as Georgia has no significant heart problems, and no bowel problems that would have shown up).

I don't know what I would have done, had I have known. But, I in the spirit of absolute honesty, I often thank my lucky stars for that Indian man, and his sqeamishness about dildocam, because I think there is a fair to good chance, that he saved my beloved babies life.

That's beautiful Jules I identify with it in that Jirah's Paed is Indian and the sweetest, gentlest man. He did not like to be in the room with me when I was breastfeeding (at least trying to!) my newborn baby

That was interesting about Blake's sac, Kylie. I wonder if anyone else had that.

Cas

I was 35 when Wil was conceived and 36 when he was born. my first baby (Tom) was when I was 30 and then miscarriage when I was 35 so I was trying to get a move on for the third time lucky.
His NF was within the normal range but the blood test made the result 1 in 94. I remember crying for a while because something in me knew I was the 1. But then all the other ultrasounds were clear (I had them every 4 weeks due to Tom being born at 24 weeks). The risk of miscarrying from CVS or amnio was higher for me so I chose not to have them done.
Then, a few weeks before Wil was due, there was an article in the Sunday Herald Sun magazine written by a father who's daughter Mia had just been born with DS. As I read it I just knew this was what would happen to us. D actually cried reading it too and thought the same as me. Strange hey?
The one unusual thing about Wil when he was born is that he had a short umbilical cord (he couldn't get to the breast) - someone else mentioned it on another thread. Is this common?

Oh you're so lucky you got to put baby to breast to help with the placenta delivery! As much as I protested and said I didn't want it, the midwives went ahead and gave me a catheter and pulled mine out They also cut the cord before I was ready. It was like an out of body experience because it was the most traumatic birth experience I had had. I don't remember the length of the cord but I do remember she fed straight away and that just mad everything alright

Cas