Amniocentesis and the Waiting Game

On Monday Nov. 28th, we drove up to Fairfax to the Genetics & IVF Center for the Amniocentesis.  I gotta admit that I was rather nervous about the whole thing.  We met with a Genetic Councilor to go over the blood test results, and to discuss what we should expect from the Amnio an when we should get the test results back.  They often times try to get and give preliminary results to the expectant parents about 3 days after the test is done and the final result after 10 days.  The genetic councilor asked all about our family history, and after this interview, we were take back to on of the exam rooms for the Amnio.  Before they take the sample, they do an in depth ultrasound, and if you want to, you can find out the sex of your baby.  We found out, much to our surprise, that we are gonna have a baby girl.  When they were taking a look at baby girl, they did NOT find any physical indicators of Down Syndrome, which was rather reassuring, but they did notice that the Amnion had not fused to the Chorion.  They did give us a picture of Baby Girl, which is always exciting.  Then the doctor takes this needle that's about 6" long and jabs it in my stomach.  Oh my god it hurt, but Dr. Stern was very careful not to hurt baby girl.  He told me it would only take 30 seconds, oh no, it was more like 2 minutes.  But then we were done, and the waiting game began.

Jennifer (the genetic councilor) called us on Thursday Dec.1st with good news from the preliminary test results.  Baby girl did NOT have any chromosomal abnormalities.  So from a genetic aspect, she's perfectly healthy.  Now we just had to wait on the final results.

We got the final Amnio test results back on Tuesday Dec 13th.  We had good and not so good news.  The good news was that the prelim results matched the final results.  The not so good news was that the lab was only able to grow and cultivate one cell instead of 18 - 20 which they feel more comfortable with.  So they want me to come in again and at minimum have another ultrasound, and possibly have another Amnio.

So we went back to the Genetics & IVF Center to talk with Jennifer and Dr. Stern.  This time when we got there, we had the ultrasound done first.  Dr. Stern took another look at baby girl, and again did NOT see anything physically wrong with her, however, what he did notice was that there was an even greater gap between the Amnion and Chorion than before.  So based on this and what he saw from the ultrasound, he didn't feel that it was necessary to do another Amnio.  He then classify me as being at-risk for preterm labor, but wanted me to talk to my OB to see where to go from here.