Just wondering

I took some but mostly forgot. I took iron consistently though.

There's nothing you did or didn't do to cause your baby to have T21. It's random. I took vitamins before and during pregnancy. Never drank or smoked. Worked out regularly before getting pregnant. No drugs. Overall healthy and 29 years old when I got pregnant, and my baby was born with T21 and a heart defect. 1 in 1,000 odds. My mom on the other hand, was in her mid 40s when she got pregnant with my little sister and was not the healthiest, but she had a typical/healthy baby. All that to say, it's totally random. Currently I only take prenatals at 10 months postpartum. First month or two of pregnancy I had a really hard time eating anything, including vitamins, but I did at least take folate I believe. Dr prescription cause my morning sickness was so bad. After the morning sickness went away, I went back to taking prenatals like normal

Or maybe it was Folic acid. I can't remember now

@Alicia I took a range of pregnancy related vitamins and due to the fact that we was trying for so long aswell. I think the only one I didn’t take was iron tablets but I did take vitamin d, prenatals, aspirin as prescribed by doctor. I’m still just trying to work my head around the whole T21 diagnosis xox

@Ashley we have very similar stories the difference is I got pregnant at 28 and gave birth at 29. I stayed away from alcohol, drugs, etc and tried my best to take all my vitamins. I have friends who didn’t take vitamins and such and had a typical baby. I guess I’m just trying to figure out what happened, for example in my future pregnancies do I take vitamins or not. It’s just a little scary not being able to control the health of your unborn child no matter how hard to try and be healthy xox

As Ashley said, there's nothing you did or didn't do. There isn't a way to prevent it, it just happens.

@Alicia true hun x

I had my first two pregnancies with chromosome abnormalities. I wanted to reduce my risks for the future and did a few different things. It has to do with the quality of your eggs. As we age, the quality drops. Being in late 30s/early 40s, I knew I needed to improve egg quality. Since then, my last two pregnancies ended with typical children (no disabilities).

@Abby I was wondering if we could improve our egg quality; could you suggest ways of doing this please ?

Two people to look up: Rebecca Fett and her book “It starts with the egg” and Dr Aimee Eyvazzadeh aka “The Egg Whisperer.” I watched a lot of YouTube videos from these two and read info from their websites. Some information overlapped. I felt that l, personally, did a lot the lifestyle things already (like using glass instead of plastic, diet, ect) I did get a blood test for hormones and that’s a good place to start. I took CoQ10 and so did my husband. We took the 600mg dose. My husband ate a daily Brazil nut as a Selenium supplement and drank green tea. (I don’t like tea so didn’t have any) In the pregnancy with my middle child, I also took a few other supplements like pterostilbene, NAC and PQQ. (These are all basically some potent antioxidants; each working a little differently) The idea is that antioxidants help protect the body and eggs from free radicals that cause damage and thus aging.

One other thing that I think helped me was something I found on my own. Since I knew about free radicals and antioxidants, I looked into radiation. We know X-rays impact pregnancy so I researched that more. I then did things to reduce radiation after finding research studies on it. So I put my phone in airplane mode at night (alarm and stuff will still work) and shut off wifi when not in use. My husband didn’t care to make any changes for himself on this. I also used to have my laptop on my belly when laying down and don’t do that anymore. Also, with microwave, I stay about 7 feet away (what I found recommended) when it’s in use. We had our house internet wired (husband’s choice for other reasons; he’s a tech person so there was so much in our home on wifi).I also don’t use the airport scanners & opt out (pat down). I know it sounds crazy to some and I’m not fanatical about it but when you’ve been through what I’ve been through, you figure it can’t hurt so why not just try everything.

@Abby wow thank you so much for sharing I will defo look into this xox

@Abby defo doesn’t sound a lot I totally understand! Having a child with complications can defo put a massive strain on you, so trying a different method defo won’t hurt. Can I ask, weren’t you worried in your third pregnancy in case anything went wrong?

Absolutely. I didn’t announce until I was 22 weeks and had the amnio results and anatomy scan. Even up until birth, I thought something could go wrong. (I also had 2 early miscarriages between my son and first daughter) I had a scare in the third trimester where her heart rate was up and didn’t go down. I was worried about cerebral palsy in that moment. Luckily, it went down during the NST test. With my last pregnancy (2nd daughter), I announced at 12 weeks right after we got the NIPT results back. Just decided to relax more knowing I was capable of a healthy pregnancy.

@Abby bless you, it defo seems like you’ve had a little roller coaster ride but I’m so glad everything went well. See I truly don’t know if I want another child; our daughter who is our only child was born with Down syndrome and a heart defect which wasn’t picked up on any of my scans. And it’s just very scary having gone through an entire pregnancy thinking everything is okay and then having all this complications after birth. My dream was to have a massive family but yeah xox