How can they tell if your baby has diseases like spina bifida or down sydrome ect?
The marker test actually doesn’t tell you whether or not your baby has it. Instead, it screens your blood to see if your baby MIGHT have it. If anything is positive, they do even more tests, such as an amniocentisis (where they insert a long needle through your stomach into your uterus to withdrawal some of the amniotic fluid to test it) or a 3-D ultrasound. My husband and I opted to get the test so we’d be prepared for a special needs baby but she turned out just fine. If you already missed the time period for the test, I wouldn’t worry about it. If none of it runs in either of the baby’s parents’ families, it’s very rare that something like that could occur. Also, being under 18 doesn’t affect your baby’s chance of having once of these at all. You should also know that up to 2/3 of positive screening tests turned out to be false positives, once more testing was done. I wouldn’t trouble yourself about it.
