Dee - CC had the same thing happen to her, remember? And Ally is perfect!
I will recommend the Dr Sarah Buckley book to you, Gentle Birth Gentle Mothering (you can order it from the Mothers Direct store, but I'm sure you can get it at other places, too). She has a great perspective on prenatal testing that ought to make anyone in your position feel like the testing is a powerful tool that is used excessively - much like a very powerful car in the hands of a p-plater! It's too much information with not enough support and information for parents when the odds are lowered. She also doesn't like how by doing testing and putting it to parents that they can terminate a downs risk baby (cos they can never tell you for sure that you have a downs baby until it is born!), it sends the message to Downs affected people and families that their loved one is an aberration that slipped the net. Once born, those kids are LOVED. I like how Sarah references the studies done to follow up women who had the test and those who didn't. They found that women who did not find out but ended up having downs babies reported far higher rates of happiness and satisfaction than did the women who had the test and had downs babies (as in, knowing what was coming did NOT make it easier to deal with, and in fact created more anxiety). More still, women who terminated after being given high odds reported higher depression levels than women who birthed a stillborn downs child or whose downs child died a bit later on of natural causes related to their condition. I don't know if this helps at all, but I was fascinated with these findings and I am convinced that when it comes to prenatal testing, knowledge is NOT power, it is dangerous and destructive.
Personally, I will never do testing again (ultrasounds, blood tests etc) for my next pregnancies, because I don't like mind games. With Oscar I was given my ratio of risk and when everyone else in our June Buddies posted theirs, I was very uneasy about mine. My caregivers told me they were great odds and it played on my mind until I decided that I would treat it as if I'd never done it. Which is so hard to do!
Look at it this way, sweetheart, you've been given 1 out of 118. When you look around you, do you ever see those odds reflected in real life? Out of every 118 people, how many downs affected people do you see? More of them will have debilitating issues that they developed far later in life, and probably of their own design, anyway!
I love ya, Dee, and I'm trying desperately to ease your mind here! Give CC an email - she knows where you're at
I'm thinking a trip to your parents might be in order, too - you get looked after real well there