NICU

There has been a few things that I have learned OB-GYN's that lead me to believe that they are either truly evil or incompetent.  What I mean by this is that every time Cheryl and I would get a blood test result back from the OB-GYN's the response was always the same:

• If the test results are anywhere near risk (risk defined as greater than 1%) tell the patient that either there is a exaggerated chance that your baby will have what ever that risk is.  In our case it was both spina bifida and Down Syndrome.
   
• All tests lead to Amniocentesis.
   

On first response we were told that Chloe was most likely to have Spina Bifida which means that a portion of her spinal column would not be covered by skin and the worse case scenario would be some sort of neurological disorder.  When we went to the Perinatologist we were told that the test results showed 1 out of 75 mothers with this result have a baby with Spina Bifida which was far more reassuring than most likely.  After the test that the Perinatologist gave us that day the chances were reduced to 1 out of 875 babies are born with Spina Bifida.

For the Down Syndrome part we were told that there was a 80% that Chloe would have Down Syndrome.  You cannot believe the anguish that mother and father goes through when told the results.  But once again that number was blown completely out of proportion as if these doctors make these wild claims up as they go tell their patients.

It appears that what these tests are for is to convince the patient to have Amniocentesis.  Because, I believe, the blood tests have so many false positives that they are virtually unreliable and that Amniocentesis the only reliable test out there. 

These are questions that I ask OB-GYNs.

• If blood tests are often wrong then why give to the patients exaggerated claims (i.e. 80% or 90% chance of having Down Syndrome or Spina Bifida) that does nothing but cause emotional stress to the pregnant mother and father? 
  
  If Cheryl and I were not pro-life, the encouragement was certainly to abort Chloe Elizabeth.  In fact it was not until we beaten through their thick heads of our OB-GYNs that we want to keep Chloe Elizabeth (we named her before she was born and gave her an email address) that we were told that they were rooting for us.
  
  I believe that over exaggerating these results cause more damage to the fetus than the number of lawsuits that it protects you from.  The first rule of living with a pregnant women is don't stress her out.  It is bad enough through dealing with the daily stresses that life brings, but telling a mother to be that it is almost certain that your child is defective in some way when the nature of the test has a greater inaccuracy than the certainty is either evil or incompetence.  Can you imagine what you are doing, of course not, because you do it every single day.
   
• If the purpose of the blood tests is to shock the mother into having Amniocentesis then I suppose that it is a effective tool, providing that you do not take into account the mother and father emotional health.

Cheryl and I have opted out of the Amniocentesis, because regardless of the results we were going to keep Chloe Elizabeth.  There was also a higher risk of the Amniocentesis of killing Chloe Elizabeth than the percentage of Chloe Elizabeth of having Down Syndrome or Spina Bifida and if Chloe Elizabeth would of died because of the test so would a portion of us would of died that day.

Talking with our friends who have gone through and are going through these phases of their pregnancy, they all have similar experiences with their OB-GYNs which leads me to recognized this as a cultural thing.  But the question still remains are OB-GYNs evil or incompetent?

We all understand human mistakes.  These doctors do the same stupid stuff we do each and every day.  They make the mistakes that we do and have emotional needs that we do.  But there is one big difference, we would not last long in our job is we over estimate things by 50 to 60 fold consistently and without regards to our clients. 

http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm?id=PR00015

 http://www.smartmoms.org/prenatal-tests/test6.html

Thanks.

Kim Lewis