FTS

Today we went in for our first trimester screening (which includes a blood test, ultrasound, nuchal translucency, and lots of measuring).

The blood test looks at levels of 2 pregnancy hormones in your blood. If they're both super low or at opposite ends of the chart, it's a red flag

The nuchal translucency is part of the ultrasound, and measures the pocket of fluid behind your baby's neck. All babies have a pocket of fluid there, but babies with chromosomal issues will have extra.

They use the ultrasound to get a picture of that fluid pocket for measuring, and also measure your baby's total length etc. The ultrasound is also important because it allows them to look at structures that should be there in an average pregnancy, but tend to be missing in babies with trisomy 13, 18, or 21- specifically, they look for a nose bone. They can also measure the baby's heartbeat during the ultrasound.

The results don't tell you if something is definitively wrong with your baby, but they combine those numbers with the risks for your age and weight for a new risk number, as well as note any red flag results. If there are red flags, we would go in for further testing- first another blood test, and then possibly more invasive tests. FTS detects ~91% of down syndrome and ~95% of the more severe trisomies, so mostly we're just hoping for no red flags and a healthy baby!
Results take a week, so today we: Got to see our baby, again! Such a little wiggler! See and measure our baby's heartrate (155)! AND we DO know that our baby has a nose bone! That nose bone is a BIG indicator that we have a healthy baby with no trisomy abnormalities.

Our 10 week ultrasound was a transvaginal/internal ultrasound, which made for a clearer image, but was more difficult to focus on the whole baby at once. Our FTS ultrasound was an external/belly ultrasound, which has a lot of white noise, but still totally showed us our baby and its little hummingbird heart fluttering.


We got our results back today (Friday). All scans came back "normal" so no red flags! Yay! Obviously we weren't fearing for the worst, but having the peace of mind for something that happens pretty much randomly is great. We are 13 weeks yesterday and have our 14 week appointment on Thursday where they'll probably pinpoint our due date (based on our scans), and have an otherwise boring appointment with possibly 1 exception. A lot of baby sites say we should get to hear the baby's heartbeat, which we haven't gotten to do yet. We've physically SEEN its heartbeat twice, but haven't heard it, so that should be exciting. I'll also let our doctor know that we are going on vacation ~19 weeks and request that we try for a gender ultrasound before we go, so I can tell my family on vacation!