A 42 year-old woman who had given birth twise at age 31 and 35, is it safe for her to give birth again at age 42-43?
While there is a link between maternal age and the occurrence of trisomies, most babies with Down syndrome are born to mothers under the age of 35. This is due to the fact that there are far more younger women having babies. In fact, 80% of babies born with Down syndrome are born to women younger than 35 and the average age of a mother of a baby with Down syndrome is 28 years. Overall, the likelihood of a woman under age 30 giving birth to a child with Down syndrome is less than 1:1000. The risk increases as a woman gets older, with an incidence of about 1:112 at 40 years of age. However, this is still less than 1%.
But it says:
. In fact, 80% of babies born with Down syndrome are born to women younger than 35
That's because so many more women have babies when they are less than 35 then when they are over 35, so yes more babies with Downs are born to younger mothers, but still the CHANCE of having a baby does go up as you age, such that a mother over 40 is roughly 10 times more likely to have one than when she was less than 30.
Arthru
Yes, given that a baby has Down Syndrome, the mother is likely to be under 35 years old because that's when most women have their children anyway.In fact, 80% of babies born with Down syndrome are born to women younger than 35
There is a test were they stick a long needle into the womb pull out fluids and check for abnormal stuff, but the test comes with risk also .... My wife and Me chose not to do the test because of the risk of doing the test , but we knew we would not abort anyway so no reason to take the risk
Down syndrome cannot be diagnosed based on ultrasound findings alone.