Women with Sickle Cell Need Special Prenatal Care
While I’m always on the lookout for current news on the fertility front, I’m also looking out for news about any type of condition that my family and I have, or in my dad’s case, had before he passed away. One of my nephews was diagnosed with sickle cell trait in the early months after he was born. And talk about scary in the way we found out!
He had had some blood drawn at the hospital, right after he was born to test for certain things. I’m sure that my sister signed something to this effect, yet she couldn’t remember what they actually tested for. Well, when he was just a few months old, we got a certified letter from our local health department, requiring us to contact them immediately about the baby’s results. We got the letter on a Friday afternoon, so we couldn’t find out what it was about until Monday so we were in for a tense, tear filled, worried weekend.
When we finally did get a hold of our of their counselors, they described sickle cell trait to us. And for my nephew it really isn’t a big deal. He just needs to be sure to have his wife tested for the trait before they have children, as they could genetically pass on sickle cell anemia to their child.
The above article describes some statistics that women who have sickle cell trait can experience.
Compared with the women without the sickle cell trait, women with the trait were 85 percent less likely to deliver before 32 weeks and 94 percent more likely to be carrying more than one fetus. These relationships were still seen after the effects of assisted reproductive technologies and other influential factors were considered, the report indicates
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