Nothing makes me feel older than having the doctors constantly point out that I am of “Advanced Maternal Age.” Even when they don’t say it out loud, you can always find paperwork inconspicuously labelled “AMA.” I’m 35 for goodness sake! It’s not like I am 100 or something. OK.. I know that they do it for a reason. I have more of a chance for complications or chromosomal abnormalities because my eggs are old and stale from sitting around for 35 years…. but still! Can’t they think of a better name like “Slightly-Higher Maternal Age” or “She’s Really Not That Old”? They might as well just call me “Old and Stale Girl.”
Anyway… because of my “Advanced Maternal Age,” the doctor recommended that we get a Nuchal Translucency screening to check for chromosomal abnormalities (such as Downs Syndrome and Trisomy 13/18) before they stitch me up. The Nuchal is just an “ultrasound on steriods” and they combine the findings with a bloodtest to determine my odds of having babies with chromosomal abnormalities. The Nuchal was like torture as it took an hour for the babies to flip in the proper position for the tech to take her measurements. I thought that my stomach was going to rip open from all of the pressure. I almost drowned in ultrasound jelly!
We got the results right away and in a rare moment of good luck, we actually received fabulous results. Before the screening, we had about a 1 in 253 chance of having a baby with Downs Syndrome and a 1 in 451 chance of Trisomy 18/13 (purely based on my risks as a mom with “Advanced Maternal Age” 
After the screening, we supposedly have a 1 in about 3,000 chance of Downs and 1 in 9,000 chance of Trisomy.
As a bonus, they have this fun graph that shows your adjusted age based on the risks and it says that I have an equivalent risk of a 20 year old. I am only 20 years old now and I have paperwork from my doctor to prove it. So there!
