OK, she needs to weigh this up. The 1 in 300 is based on three things, the nuchal fold measurement, her bloods and her age. They combine them to get a combined result. If they just went on her age, the odds would be much worse than 1 in 300 - maybe 1 in 50 but you can look that up. That means that her nuchal fold and bloods are quite good because the odds have been pushed out to 1 in 300.

I would advise her to look into it in more detail. There is a risk of miscarriage from an amnio and I can't remember if it's 1 in 250 or 1 in 300. Something around that but my ob told me that some amnio testers have better odds than others so that's also worth looking into. So basically her risk of a miscarriage is about the same as the risk of having a baby with Downs but to me, based on her age, I don't think the 1 in 300 risk is too bad. She has a 299 chance in 300 of having a non-Downs baby.

I was an older mum too so I know what the stress is like. I THINK (again check) that she could wait until the 18 (or is it 20?) morphology scan - it won't give her a definitive yes/no but my ob told me that in the case of Downs the scan could pick up other associated physical signs. PLEASE CHECK THIS OUT FOR YOURSELF, my brain is fried and I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly. There is also another test, called the CVS test but as I've never had it, I'm not too sure if that's appropriate - it can identify Down's.

So, on the whole, my advice would be to look into it in far more detail before deciding whether or not to go ahead with the amnio.