Full, partial or mosaic?

Trisomy 18. What is it? Most people can grasp pretty quickly that it means that you have three copies of chromosome 18.

Most of us have 22 pairs of chromosomes, each pair numbered 1-22, and a pair of sex chromosomes (XX for a girl, XY for a boy). Babies with a trisomy have three of one of these chromosomes instead of the pair. Babies with trisomy 18 therefore have three copies of chromosome 18.

See this image for a picture of the chromosomes of a boy with T18.

Rumer's Story, part 8

Genetics appointment, amnio and a wedding!

Wednesday 3rd to Sunday 7th June 2015
22 to 23 weeks pregnant

So we went to the Genetics appointment, which was on a different site to the maternity appointments. It was a much older building, and much quieter. It was an interesting place. We admired an art piece on the wall that used stripy socks to represent chromosomes. I still have an ambition to make one myself, but with three copies of chromosome 18.