Genetic

Memory wall

Have you had to sit down and make a medical decision that could potentially end up aborting the 5 month-old fetus you have declared as your baby?

I have.

It was 1997 and Napier and I were getting ready to leave on our last vacation as a 'just the two of us'. We figured that once the baby was born our lives would be altered forever as three and that no matter how 'romantic' and exclusive the getwaway, once you have a child to care for, you're life, your body and your mind become inexorably linked to them and forever living in a world that would be 'just the two of us AND BABY'.

So you can imagine how unhappy I was when we were called from the OB/GYN's office to discuss a test I had but heard of in passing.

The results of an alphafetoprotein test had come in. This test was also known at the time as "The Triple Test" and it was developed by some R&D company with deep lobbying pockets to, screen for a slew of birth defects, one of them being Down Syndrome.

This test has become the bane of many pregnant women (now it, by the way, known as the Quadruple Test).

If you do not have an exact date of conception, this particular test is notorious for a ridiculous high percentage of false positives