What are the chances of us having a baby with down syndrome?
Stacy & Ryan asked:
My husband has two brothers, one of them has down syndrome. We currently had a miscarriage in September. The doctor didn’t know why but it was possible that it was a baby with down sydrome. He wasn’t for sure but he said it COULD have been a possibility as to why we lost that baby. We are now trying for baby #2, what are the statistics and the chances that our child and all of our children in the near future will have down sydrome?
My husband and I are both 23 years old.
My husband has two brothers, one of them has down syndrome. We currently had a miscarriage in September. The doctor didn’t know why but it was possible that it was a baby with down sydrome. He wasn’t for sure but he said it COULD have been a possibility as to why we lost that baby. We are now trying for baby #2, what are the statistics and the chances that our child and all of our children in the near future will have down sydrome?
My husband and I are both 23 years old.
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In order to know your chances of having a child with Down syndrome, it is important that your husband get a blood test called a karyotype. This will take a picture of his chromosomes. Down syndrome (caused by an extra chromosome #21) usually does not run in families. However, ~3% of the time, it is due to a translocation (2 chromosomes stuck together). If this is the case, it may run in his family. This blood test will be able to rule it out and give you more information so you can make a good decision. I hope it works out for you.
Your chances are slim to none
Your chances are very small…even with people giving those stats for having a baby with Downs, every woman and every pregnancy is different. Because of my age (30) I had the triple screening test done and it told me I had a 1 in 2500 chance of having a baby with Downs, more like an 16yr old. But that is for this pregnancy only…basically those stats are just averages.
You being 23 I wouldn’t worry about it at all. Unless you miscarried in the hospital and they did testing on your baby the doctor shouldn’t have mentioned DS being a cause. But I could see you asking him if DS could have been a cause and him saying, yes it’s possible. Possible, but I’m SURE a very very remote possibility.
Good luck and don’t stress about it
After seeing your question, i decided to do a little bit of research:
-Having a child with Down’s syndrome is more likely if a woman already has a child with the syndrome, or if a close family member has had an affected child. But most cases are the parents aren’t affected and the risk of recurrence in further pregnancies is very small
also the older you are, the more likely you are to have a child born with Down Syndrome:
20 years old – 1 in 1,500
25 years old- 1 in 1,300
30 years old – 1 in 900
35 years old – 1 in 350
40 years old – 1 in 100
45 years old – 1 in 30
in your case you are 23 years old which would mean that you have 1/1500 chance of having a baby with down syndrome
Hope Ive Helped =]
Your miscarriage could have been a thousand things other than Down Syndrome. Your risk of having a Downs baby at 23 are very low. Something like 1/2500. If you’re worried, then after you get pregnant, don’t tell anyone until after you have a CVS (chorionic villi sampling) test at 9 weeks. Within a couple days (if you pay extra for the fast results) you’ll know if the baby has DS. Then you can terminate it if you don’t want to have the child. If you wait until amnio, you have to wait until at least 16 weeks (usually 18 or 20) and that’s very late for an abortion. They’ll do it, but you already feel the baby move at that point. It’s creepy.
I’m 37 and my chances of having a DS baby were 1/250. I had and amnio and my baby is perfectly normal.
well since your husband carries the gene your chances do go up. but i think the normal statistic is like 1 in 800-1000 live births. and if your over 35 years old the chances go up more.
i hope you get lucky with a healthy baby though.
they’re not very high. Down syndrome is caused by a messup when DNA is being copied and then put together again. it’s unlikely to have a baby with down syndrome. and your young. so the chances are even lower.
it’s unlikely. Your doctor should never have even mentioned Downs syndrome as a reason for miscarriage. Theres NO WAY he could know that early on.
At your age, you should be fine.
If you and your husband are 23 the chances of you having a down syndrome baby are VERY VERY slim! The younger you are (within reason of course) the better chances you won’t have a child with downs syndrome.. how old was your mother-in-law when she had the baby with down syndrome? If you do become pregnant again you could talk to your doctor about doing a prenatal screening to see if your baby does have down syndrome so you could better prepare yourself if you feel that it is needed
From what I can find, your chances are small. Apparently:
Researchers have extensively studied the defects in chromosome 21 that cause Down syndrome. In 88% of cases, the extra copy of chromosome 21 is derived from the mother. In 8% of the cases, the father provided the extra copy of chromosome 21. In the remaining 2% of the cases, Down syndrome is due to mitotic errors, an error in cell division which occurs after fertilization when the sperm and ovum are joined.
It looks like there is a higher chance it could come from you than your husband. At your age, it shouldn’t be a problem but it can happen at any age.
you should just adopt
there are perfectly fine children that need a home
It really depends on your age. Down’s Syndrome is not a hereditary problem. Your chances increase as you get older, but if you are under 30 there is less than 1% chance, if you are over 35 your chance goes up to about 2%. Good Luck.