I’m mid 30’s from Ontario too and also had the help of a fertility clinic to become pregnant with our first. My world shattered on June 24 when OB called with high risk screening result for T18. I was 14 weeks and after seeing significant abnormalities and health concerns on the ultrasound we opted not to wait until 16 weeks for amino. False positives are absolutely possible and I held onto that until I knew something was clearly wrong. I opted for a D&C that same week. It has been just over 2 weeks since our loss. It has been so hard but I am starting to see a light at the end of all of this. More on reddit.com

I also have no idea what the Z score is, but my nipt came back 98% ppv for T21, amnio came back negative, I now have a happy healthy 6 month old More on reddit.com

I’m so sorry to hear this. I have no experience with this and I can only imagine what it must be like. I just want to say that It’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling. Also, If it’s not a false positive, however you decide to proceed is nobody’s business but yours and nobody has a right to judge. More on reddit.com

Just wanted to jump in and say that the r/NIPT subreddit is an AMAZING place. I had an NIPT with a positive (it was a true positive) but I learned a lot and had a lot of support in that forum for everything that came next. If your NIPT is negative or « low risk »- your odds of Down’s is very VERY low. These tests are considered gold standard because they err on the side of false positive- they want to make sure they catch EVERY true positive and sometimes then identify those that are not truly positive, but the chance of missing something like Down’s syndrome is 1 in 10,000 or more. It’s extremely accurate. Measurements of a soft marker are just that- completely non-specific and in the setting of a negative NIPT, nothing to worry about. Your doctor can talk to you more about a dilated kidney but if they aren’t worried, you shouldn’t be either. It’s important to remember that there are plenty of very rare diseases that NIPT doesn’t screen for— if that was the only thing they saw that was slightly abnormal, I don’t think there’s too much cause for concern. If your doctor was worried they would have you do an amnio or follow up with a high risk Maternal-Fetal-Medicine doctor for further screenings or tests. Soft markers are useful when there are multiple showing up- but in the setting of NIPT they are rather useless (unless they are signaling for another disease not tested for on NIPT). An Amnio is not a risk-free procedure. If there’s a real reason to be concerned (and your doctor or a genetic counselor) is encouraging you to get one, of course, get one. I had one done because my NIPT showed I was very high risk- and it turned out to be OK. One soft marker with a negative NIPT? Talk with your doctor about your concerns, but that wouldn’t be enough for me to get an amnio unless there were other reasons. Please be reassured by your NIPT results, they are incredibly sensitive and specific. There is a 1 in 10,000 chance that NIPT is wrong, there is a 8:9 chance that the soft marker is wrong (and probably way more than that in the setting of negative NIPT). More on reddit.com