Pregnancy: Early Pregnancy Testing - Good Idea or Bad Idea

Is Knowing Potential Problems in Pregnancy More Helpful or Harmful for the Mother?

If you're a woman who is thinking about having a child in the future, I have just one question for you. How can knowing the potential problems be harmful? I have never been pregnant and honestly do not plan on ever being pregnant, so I have absolutely no experience. However, if I were to decide to have a child, I would want to have all the testing done that I possibly could.

No matter if it is your first or your fourth pregnancy, things can go badly and you never really know will happen. If you've been pregnant before and were a high risk, wouldn't you want to know if you're at risk if you get pregnant a second time? When you know the possibilities, you can better prepare your life for the changes and accommodations that you need to make in order to care for your child. If you have testing done during your pregnancy, you have more time to prepare yourself for what the future is going to look like.

When you know the possibilities, you can assess ahead of time whether you are capable of caring for that child or not. Not everyone can afford to have a special needs child, nor are they mentally able to care for a special needs child. If you know during your pregnancy that your child is likely to be a special needs child, then the parents can sit down and figure out what they want to do, rather than having to make a snap decision when the child is born.

For me, personally, I wouldn't be able to physically care for a special needs child due to my own physical limitations. I would want to know during the course of my pregnancy so that I could discuss it with my husband and we could determine whether we wanted to try to keep our child. In a lot of cases, both parents are working and only take a little bit of time off, but if there are going to be complications it could be decided what to do and how to care for the child.