Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Q and A...procreation

Q:  What are your chances of having another baby that has ds? Also, will it be geneticly passed on from Chase if he has children?

A:  The geneticist we met with after Chase was born told us briefly that our chances of having another child with Ds was 1%...but not truly based on numbers, just that it had to be higher than nothing.   I didn't really understand that.  Basically, I think that it means that since Ds is a genetic anomoly, and Chase has the regular old fluke-ish Trisomy 21, that our chances don't really change, but they have to assign us a number just because.  If anyone else has a better answer than that, I'd love to hear it.

As far as Chase goes, I believe that most males with Ds are sterile.  So his chances of passing it on are close to nothing.  I have heard stories of women with Ds giving birth to typical babies.  I don't know what the real odds are on that, and I am too tired to look up any genetics information just now :)

1 comment:

Chris said...

I do think that 1 in 100 number is pretty random.

I lost a baby to Turner's syndrome. At that point, my doctors told me that it was a random occurrence, that my odds for having another child with a chromosomal abnormality was 1 in 100--same as the general population.

7 years later we were the 1. John was born with Ds.

I've been playing the lottery lately--still haven't been the one though :(