IVF Journey: 13w6d pregnant

This is my IVF diary. My husband and I have been trying to have a baby for four years now, and have a diagnosis of 'unexplained infertility'. We have finally reached the top of the waiting list for IVF - a form of assisted conception. I'm blogging about what happens as it happens, as a kind of therapy for me and as an awareness raising exercise of what IVF is all about.

We had the results of the Down’s Syndrome test in the post today. The likelihood of Down’s is 1 in 4,855 which is great (esp as it states the age-related chance as 1:444). Anything better than 1:150 is considered low risk, so that is very low risk. No further testing or action is required.

Still a chance, of course, but I’ll not bother worrying about that.

The letter noted that this was an IVF pregnancy, and said that it had been assumed that the age of the embryo implanted was the same age as the pregnant lady – if not I should ring them for a recount. This would be a concern if my age and the 'age' of my embryo were wildly different (i.e. I'm a 34 year old but did my embryo come from a 34 year old?), for example if I’d had a donor egg from a woman much older or younger than me, or if my embryo had been on ice for years. As the likelihood of Down's increases with maternal age, it may well be for IVF pregnancies that the risk is actually lower than it comes out the first time if the baby was conceived with a much ‘younger’ egg. Well my embryo is about seven months younger than me, but I don’t think that is worth bothering them with.

Why they couldn’t just ask about embryo age as part of the testing process though, I don’t know.