Triple test…

One of the most scary things for pregnant women to go through, besides the actual labour process (needless to say), is all the prenatal tests, or rather say is the tough time while waiting for test result..

The blood test carried out around my 16th week (about 4 weeks before the full scan blogged by Win below..), is the so called "Triple Test" (we nearly forgot to blog about this for some reason). Basically the result of this test will show if a mother is at either high-risk or low-risk for having a baby with a birth defect (such as Down Syndrome, Edward Syndrome, etc). It is only about 70% accurate, normally high-risk patients are then referred for other tests like an amniocentesis to receive a more accurate diagnosis.

We visited Dr Lim on a Sat morning as usual. After the routine checkup in his room, I was asked to review and sign on a consent form for the triple test, the details of it, I could not recall at all. After which, Winson followed me to another laboratory right outside the clinic. A lady (not sure a nurse or doctor anyway) brought up a tray with tourniquet(the rubber strap to be secured above the vein), needle and tubes. Without knowing much about what's going on exactly, the needle was already inserted into my vein and she started collecting my blood sample.

Win was standing right in front of me and I guess either his tolerance level for pain is really low, or he simply cannot stand it when seeing blood being drawn out from my vein, his face just changed and looked so tortured while at the same time, I did not really feel a thing.. I immediately decided that he is only allowed to stand behind my head during my labour. I am 100% sure that he cannot "tahan" the whole process.. The lady was not surprised at his reaction at all, she must have seen many husbands reacting like this before.. Haha.. She just carried on the casual talk with me and even explained to me how the "vacuum blood tube" works. Looks quite interesting, haha it stops drawing the blood automatically once the tube is full. (Err.. or maybe I am just too outdated to find this interesting??).. After the blood draw, I was advised to hold and press the cotton ball placed on the puncture site but not to rub it, or else it will cause bruise. That is really new to me.. Haha…

Then, here comes.. the long wait…
I was told to wait for the result which will be posted to me in a week's time (provided the result is all good). And they will give me a buzz if there's anything wrong with the test result. Throughout the week I had to look at my hp every few seconds and pray for not being called up.. Okay that sounds a bit exaggerated but seriously, I bet I've never realized that my hp can be so important to me at any point of my life time. So you can imagine how excited I was on the 5th day, when I found the Tow Yung Clinic envelop in my letter box. I am so grateful that they printed the clinic name and logo on their envelop itself..

And here's the final result:
With all the scientific jargons that we could never understand, but the graphic is really self-explanatory and basically shows that I do not belong to the high risk group..

But still.. more tests to come..
And what I realized is, for parents-to-be, no need to worry too much about your foetus because no matter how, there's nothing you can do about the result and worrying is not going to make things any better.. SO… BE POSITIVE!!!

p/s: saying is easy, but I am still feeling super anxious everytime before the checkup appointment.. and that feeling can really last for a few days.. -_-!! Luckily Win is always there for me.. *sob sob*.. so touched..