Hi Mummaof1, sorry that you are going through this, it must be very worying to say the least. My baby didn't have a hole in the heart but a more serious heart condition and yes I had an amnio. I think its a good idea to get one to understand if there is a genetic condition as it will give your specialists a better idea of what is going on (and if there are any other medical conditions they need to take into consideration when addressing the heart issue). There is a lot that surgeon's / the medical industry can for a hole in the heart and I believe in some situations surgery is not even required, but I am sure you will be given the correct factual information. Good luck.
We didn't have a hole in the heart, but did have another soft marker giving us a higher risk of Down syndrome or another chromosomal disorder. We declined the amnio at that stage as we felt that it the extra information didn't cancel out the risk of the amnio, but it is a very personal choice. Even though we declined the amnio, we were treated as higher risk and so had extra monitoring, one of which was an echo scan done by a cardiologist at the main children's hospital here, plus more frequent scans to check on the baby. Maybe see if this is an option if you don't want to do the amnio. We ended up having an amnio at 28 weeks but that was due to a complication with our little one's lungs. At 28 weeks, the risk is pre term labour as opposed to miscarriage, but we had thought we would be delivering at that point anyway .
I'm sure they've explained it to you, but just in case, the reason they will have suggested the amnio is that between 50-60% of babies born with Down syndrome have a hole in their heart (an ASD or a AVSD), but it is fixable by surgery.
If you decide to go ahead with the amnio, and you haven't already been referred to the maternal fetal medicine department at your hospital, it's worth asking for a referred. These doctors are really experienced at doing amnios and so their risk levels are quite low.
Good luck with everything.
Thanks everyone for the replies. At 19 week morp scan today the sonography found a hole in bubs heart. The Dr came and saw us and he was fantastic and explained that it could be an indicator of a genetic issue but could also just be a case of a heart defect which can correct itself.
We opted to have the amnio straight away to give us an answer about the genetic side of it. We were advised of how the hole would be treated while in utero and also after birth so honestly I'm feeling ok about that part but am concerned about the genetic potential of this. I had no other indicators and my 12 weeks scan results had all been really good.
Just wanted to see if anyone else had a similar situation.
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Hole in heart and amnio??
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