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When it comes to inherited diseases, you have options your grandmother and mother never did. You can receive pre-pregnancy genetic counseling or have early pregnancy testing of the fetus for abnormalities. Your grandmother, who may have had children well into her 40s, was more likely to have a baby born with chromosomal abnormalities. Such problems are more common in women over 35, and there was no way to test for them during pregnancy in earlier generations. Your mother may have been afraid to have more than one child if she knew there was a family history of cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy. The problem that your aunt had during pregnancy from an inherited bleeding disorder is now a condition that can be diagnosed and treated during pregnancy, increasing your chances of having a healthy, full-term baby. Rh factors may have caused fetal death just two generations ago, but they can now be easily prevented by an injection of RhoGAM, which prevents the growing fetus from having its blood cells attacked in utero.

Remember, these are all statistical numbers. Some families where both parents carry a recessive gene disorder have multiple children in a row who have the disease, despite the 25 percent odds per child. Other families don’t. Statistics are based on large numbers of people and the likelihood of any one event occurring. You and your family may or may not fall into the statistical pattern. (We talk a lot more about what your genes do later on in Chapter 3.)