Trisomy 16

I went to the doctor today for my follow-up from the miscarriage.  It was all good news.  There was no indication of any problem with my body or the way I carried the pregnancy.  This is good because those problems might have meant higher risk for the future. 

The chromosomal analysis showed that the fetus had Trisomy 16.  This means that instead of a pair of chromosome 16, the fetus had 3 copies.  Trisomy 16 is the most common chromosomal cause of miscarriage.  This problem alone doesn't indicate any higher risk of problems in future pregnancies.  If you've never heard the word "trisomy," you might be interested to know that Down Syndrome is also known as Trisomy 21.  People with this condition have 3 copies of chromosome 21.  All trisomies are major problems but only trisomies 18 and 21 generally appear in living humans (although there are rare cases of live births withother trisomies).  The rest involve defects so severe that the babies die before birth.

Another good thing is that Trisomy 16 is in no way related to what happened with my first pregnancy.  The two problems that I have had are most likely totally unconnected.  This means that I've had some bad luck, and bad luck is much better than an underlying problem!

I still have to wait until Monday for blood test results to make sure that my hormone levels have gone down.  If they have not, that would indicate that some tissue remains and my body still thinks it is pregnant.  But once I clear that hurdle, we've been given the green light to try to get pregnant again during my next cycle, which means we have to wait just about a month.  I don't think we're going to try to avoid pregnancy this month, though; we'll just see how it goes.