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Hello everyone,
My daughter was diagnosed with an echogenic foci on her heart in the 12th week. I am 37 years old. My ATP bloodwork plus measurements gave me a chance of 1:1500. With the foci it lowered to 1:280. I opted out of amnio. Words cannot describe how stressed I became. I was so distraught I almosted refused for my friends to give me a baby shower. I had preterm labor for several weeks and delivered a week early because of my stupid stress!!! And YES---my little girl was delivered completely normal. She is 3 months old and all tests reveal no heart defects and the bright spot is gone. THis my advice ladies---Ask your doctor how many times has he seen a baby with normal bloodwork and normal trans nuch. measurements with an echogenic foci that resulted in down syndrome. My high risk OB doctor said he has seen it once in 13 years. He said it was a teenager who waited too long for the nucal trans. test to be accurate. I understand the fluid behind the neck drains after a certain time frame (is it 16 weeks?) He also said the baby had slow growth, so he had other indicators. He is confident he would have detected down syndrome had she made all of her appointments. He said he sees echogenic heart foci 10-15 times a week (he has a busy office too). After hearing this infomation, I was able to get through the rest of my pregnancy. I still thought about the spot, but the odds were highly in my favor. The nurse also said it is very rare to have a false negative AFP test unless the doctors measurements are wrong of the actual gestation age. The test is 90-95% accurate and even higher if you and your doctor have a good idea of when you became pregnant. Some people get a false positive, like my sister, because the doctor thought she was further along than she was (Yes, my nephew is also normal). I wish I could reach out and hug every one of you. Please don't go into preterm labor because of stress. I hope some of you can sleep easy after hearing this. GOD bless

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